May not procure foodgrains of farmers burning stubble next year: Dalal

Agriculture minister JP Dalal statement comes on a day when the Supreme Court directed that farmers should stop the stubble burning forthwith in northern states of Punjab, Haryana and Western Uttar Pradesh, saying it was one of the major contributors to air pollution

: Acting tough on farmers in Haryana for burning stubble, agriculture minister JP Dalal said that the state ‘may go to the extent of not procuring foodgrains next year’ from those who burn rice residue, even as the state registered a 39% dip in farm fire cases on Tuesdayin comparison to the same period last year.

May not procure foodgrains of farmers burning stubble next year: Dalal (PTI)

Dalal’s statement comes on a day when the Supreme Court directed that farmers should stop the stubble burning forthwith in northern states of Punjab, Haryana and Western Uttar Pradesh, saying it was one of the major contributors to air pollution.

The minister said Haryana has been ‘very tough’ with the cultivators to contain rice residue burning cases during the current paddy harvesting cycle.

Haryana on Tuesday recorded one of the lowest 26 active fire events in a day due to rice residue burning, pushing the cumulative number of farm fires so far to 1,605 against 2,613 recorded on November 7, 2022.

Haryana had also detected just 37 farm fires on November 7 last year. The highest 127 stubble burning events of this season were recorded on October 15 followed by 109 on November 5.

The farm fires are primarily blamed for the air pollution in the Delhi-NCR region during the kharif harvesting season.

“Despite inviting the ire of the farmers we have been pursuing our incentive-driven zero-stubble burning policy rigorously,” Dalal said, accusing Punjab of playing politics over the air pollution and not only polluting the Delhi-NCR, but also Haryana by not controlling the farm fires in the border state.

“The data being collected everyday by different central government departments speaks for itself. We have significantly reduced farm fires, while Punjab is resorting to blame game only and doing nothing,” he said.

According to the agriculture minister, from next year, the state government “may go to the extent of not procuring foodgrains” of the farmers who are resorting to stubble burning this year.

Punjab needs to act tough on farm fires: Dalal

Dalal, who has been campaigning in the poll-bound Rajasthan, said people of Haryana as well as Delhi-NCR will continue to suffer from air pollution in paddy harvesting seasons until Punjab acts tough against farmers and reduce farm fires.

He said that Haryana has imposed heavy fines and issued challans against those burning the stubble.

“We have also registered cases against those burning the crop residue. The farmers are very upset with us. But Punjab is only playing politics over pollution and indulging in blame game instead of persuading farmers not to burn the stubble. Punjab is in a denial mode and dismissing as false every data that shows fire across paddy fields of Punjab,” Dalal said, hitting out at Punjab for not ‘taking tough steps’ against the stubble burning practice.

Meanwhile, officials in the agriculture department said as harvesting enters the last phase, near 3,000 agriculture department employees along with the team formed with villagers are on their toes to ensure zero burning incidences.

As per the official data, among the districts leading in farm fires are Fatehabad (324), Jind (226), Kaithal (227) and Kurukshetra (145).

Most of staff on field from today: Hry agri dept

Ambala: Officials in the Haryana agriculture department said that they have immediately not received any instruction on the SC order from the headquarters so far, but as the paddy harvesting enters its last stage, the staff has already been deployed on the field to ensure zero stubble burning incidents.

Jaswinder Saini, deputy director of agriculture, Ambala, said that most of his field staff will be on duty at villages in Ambala-1 block from Wednesday that have witnessed maximum cases of farm fires.

Yashbir, a farmer from Karnal said the government should take measures to inform the farmers more on the ill-effects of stubble burning.

Dimple Sharma, another farmer from Ambala, said, “As an educationist, I believe that it should be the foremost duty of any government to look into more innovative ways of the usage of stubble like in decoration, as fodder or other ways. There is no doubt that the practice of residue burning has been continuing traditionally for decades, but sometimes this also becomes a matter of ego for some farmers. But if we aim to completely end this practice, it should become a two-way mission,” he said.

Fatehabad records worst air in Haryana

According to the CPCB’s bulletin at 4pm, Haryana’s two districts of Fatehabad (421) and Hisar (403) were in the ‘severe’ AQI category, while nine others -- Kaithal (377), Faridabad (374), Gurugram (364), Bhiwani (361), Sirsa (334), Bahadurgarh (329), Panipat (328), Rohtak (326), Kurukshetra (303) recorded ‘very poor’ category.

AQI in Karnal (290) and Narnaul (275) was recorded in the ‘poor’ category. Ambala, Panchkula and Yamunanagar continued to remain in ‘moderate’ category.

Meanwhile, due to bad air conditions, Kaithal district education officer Ravinder Kumar announced closure of schools for classes 1 to 5 for three days from Wednesday.