Pak blames India for cross-border pollution

CHANDIGARH: Pakistan has blamed India for causing an “incursion of smoke” due to crop stubble burning and emissions from thermal power plants in the border states of Punjab and Rajasthan.

A report in the influential daily Dawn blamed the Indian states for the “alarming situation in south and central (Pakistani) Punjab”.

“It is not good in Lahore. Environment protection department officials said control over local pollution contributions thinned the lower layer of smog though its upper layer thickened because of enhanced incursion of smoke and ash of the crop stubble being burnt on a large scale in adjoining Indian Punjab,” the report said.

A Pakistani official said though emissions from the coal power project at Sahiwal was causing pollution, the four power plants in Indian Punjab and nine in Rajasthan were to blame for the worsening of the situation over the past week.

“Crop stubble burning is causing smog over a large area in India, and media reports there say it has failed to control the pollution-causing practice despite public outcry and censure by courts,” the report said.

The smog was particularly thick in Bahawalpur, Multan, Okara, Pakpattan, Chiniot and Faisalabad.

Punjab Pollution Control Board chairman Kahan Singh Pannu, however, said the smoke moves in the direction where the wind blows. “Smog over Lahore or Delhi is a climatic phenomenon. We are assigned the task to minimise stubble burning and we are on it,” he said.