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Three farmers booked for burning crop residue in Fatehabad
A police official said the cases were registered on a complaint lodged by the district agriculture department.
Police on Wednesday registered an FIR against three farmers for burning crop residue in Haryana’s Fatehabad.
A police official said the cases were registered on a complaint lodged by the district agriculture department.
The Fatehabad agriculture department had lodged a complaint against eight farmers for setting crop residue on fire in the district. District agriculture department, deputy director, Rajesh Sihag, said the HARSAC imagery indicates 25 instances of stubble burning in the district. “Our teams visited the locations traced by the HARSAC, of which eight cases of stubble burning were detected and other locations were found wrong. So far, police have registered a case against three farmers under Section 188 of the Indian Penal Code and cases against the remaining farmers will be lodged soon,” he said.
He said the deputy commissioner have formed a team of officials from the agriculture department, patwari, village secretary and policemen to tackle the menace.
“With farmers continuing to flout the orders by burning stubble, the deputy commissioner has invoked Section 144. We have deployed teams to check stubble burning and a campaign has been launched to spread awareness about its consequences on the environment,” Sihag added.
Kisan Sangharsh Samiti president Mandeep Nathwan said the action taken against farmers on the basis of HARSAC images is unfair. “Many times the farmers burn grass in their fields and the HARSAC gets hold of those images on the basis of billowing smoke. Can farmers be held responsible for such act?,” he said.
He said the Supreme Court had asked the state government to pay farmers ₹100 per quintal to dispose of stubble but they have failed to implement the initiative. “We used to set the residue on fire as stubble burning is a cheaper way of getting rid of crop residue rather than weeding it though the prescribed process, which is costlier. If the police will lodge an FIR against us, we will lodge a protest against them,” said Ramandeep Singh, a farmer from Jamalpur village.
