Farm fires in last 4 days make for 50% incidents this season

CHANDIGARH: : With 1,602 cases of stubble burning reported on Tuesday, the total number of farm fires this season touched 16,734 in Punjab.

Over the past three days, from Saturday to Monday, a total of 8,141 farm fires were reported in the state. As many as 3,105 cases were reported on Monday, 2,231 cases were recorded on Diwali, which fell on Sunday, and 2,805 cases were reported on Saturday. Including Tuesday’s figure, the four days witnessed 9,743 farm fires, which made for 60% of the season’s total.

Despite a visible fall in number of stubble burning cases on Tuesday, the state government has decided to act tough on the farmers.

Burning this season began in mid September because of early harvest. As many as 825 cases were reported on October 21; 570 on October 22 and 337 cases on October 23 in the state. There was a sudden spurt on October 24 with 1,087 cases and 1,530 cases on October 25, which continued till Tuesday.

The incidents peaked despite the fact that each village has a nodal officer to monitor stubble burning and all 22 districts have an officer of the rank of additional chief secretary and principal secretary as in-charge.

Speaking to HT, the additional chief secretary Viswajeet Khanna said the government plans to act tough on farmers and the impact will be visible in days to come. He was confident the number of farm fires this kharif season would be lesser than last year. As many as 50,495 cases were reported in 2018, which was 9.95% less than 2017.

Khanna said he was hopeful that matters would take a turn for the better as 55% of paddy harvest has been completed this year, and the number of farm fires was less than half of last year’s total.

The central government’s twoyear scheme that started in 2018 with a total outlay of ₹1,150 crore to the three paddy growing states of Punjab, Haryana, Uttar Pradesh for in-situ management of stubble has failed to make an impact. The state government has claimed that the subsidised machinery supplied was sufficient to cover only one-third of total the area under paddy cultivation.