Amarinder seeks assistance on stubble burning
NEWDELHI:Punjab chief minister Captain Amarinder Singh on Thursday sought Prime Minister Modi’s intervention on Thursday to resolve the air pollution crisis in northern India, a day after Delhi chief minister Arvind Kejriwal blamed smoke from crop field fires in neighbouring states for the thick haze shrouding the city this week.
Kejriwal sought a meeting with his Punjab and Haryana counterparts, but Singh said only the Union government could tackle the problem.
On Wednesday, the two leaders were engaged in a feisty Twitter exchange as the political tug-of-war over bad air continued.
Satellite data from NASA show crop residue burning intensified on October 27, 29 and 31, and was mostly concentrated in Punjab.
An estimated 35 million tonnes of paddy stalks were set afire in Punjab and Haryana to make room for the wheat crop.
The Punjab chief minister expressed helplessness citing paucity of funds to help farmers abandon the ecologically harmful
practice of burning paddy stalks to prepare their fields for the winter crop.
In his letter to Modi, Singh requested him to bring chief ministers of the affected states and the Union agriculture and environment ministries on board to find a common solution. He had made a similar request this July. Singh also urged Modi to consider adding to the minimum support price (MSP) a
bonus of Rs100 for each quintal of wheat and rice, as an incentive to discourage farmers from burning paddy stubble.
The National Green Tribunal banned the practice in 2015, but efforts to check the fires failed. Authorities tried fining farmers and providing incentives to adopt eco-friendly technologies to get rid of the crop residue.
Chief minister Singh said the problem was essentially scientific and economic, and could not be tackled through other means. He had earlier assured farmers that they won’t be penalised.
New Delhi, Punjab, Haryana, eastern Uttar Pradesh and parts of Rajasthan are covered in haze since Tuesday as pollution levels breached permissible standards by multiple times.
“It takes about three to four days for the particulate matter to reach Delhi from Punjab,” said Sachchida Nand Tripathi, a professor at IIT-Kanpur, whose team helped collate the NASA data. The fires waned on November 7 as farmers got ready to sow the next crop. But the smoke lingered. If favourable weather conditions develop, such as surface winds picking up pace, air quality could improve after November 10, according to the India meteorological department.