E-Paper
Haryana constitutes just 7% farm fires, says officials
The figures came to light during a high-level meeting chaired by the cabinet secretary on Wednesday following the directions of the Supreme Court
During the period from September 15 to November 7, a total of 22,644 cases of stubble burning have been recorded, out of which 20,978 (93%) were in Punjab and 1,605 (7%) in Haryana.
The figures came to light during a high-level meeting chaired by the cabinet secretary on Wednesday following the directions of the Supreme Court.
The meeting was attended by the chief secretaries and other senior officers of Punjab, Haryana, Uttar Pradesh, Rajasthan and National Capital Region (NCR).
The meeting was also attended by chairman, commission on air quality management (CAQM) and secretaries of ministries of environment & forests, agriculture, housing and urban affairs and power, a spokesperson said.
Based on the data provided by CAQM and the inputs by the state governments, it emerged that the current crisis situation is majorly on account of stubble burning and 38% of air pollution level was due to stubble burning on November 8, the spokesperson added.
During discussions, it also emerged that harvesting is more than 90% complete in Haryana whereas it is 60% complete in Punjab.
CAQM was instructed to send out flying squads to Punjab and Haryana, and submit daily reports on the incidents of farm fires and the status of enforcement of directions of the Supreme Court by the DCs and SSPs.
It was also noted that ₹3,333 crore has been released by the ministry of agriculture under the Crop Residue Management (CRM) scheme so far of which ₹1,531 crore was released to Punjab and ₹1,006 crore to Haryana.
Nearly 76,000 seeder machines are available under the CRM scheme in Haryana, which has been implementing its own incentive scheme for ex-situ management for procurement of straw from farmers, its transportation, etc.
The Haryana government also informed about an incentive scheme being implemented for crop diversification to encourage farmers to shift from paddy to other crops.
Kaithal most polluted in Haryana
According to the CPCB’s bulletin at 4 pm, Haryana’s five districts were in the “severe” category, including Kaithal (436), Fatehabad (413), Hisar (410), Faridabad (410) and Gurugram (404).
Rohtak (352), Kurukshetra (348), Bahadurgarh (342), Bhiwani (334), Karnal (327), Panipat (323) and Sirsa (310) were recorded in “very poor” category.
Meanwhile, just 27 cases of farm fires were reported in the state on Thursday with almost half of them (13) in Fatehabad alone. The district tops the chart with 351 cases out of the total 1,676 reported so far in this season.
