States letting people die: SC on air pollution
INCENTIVE Asks Punjab, Haryana, UP to support farmers not burning stubble
NEW DELHI: : The Supreme Court took the Union government and the administrations of Punjab, Haryana and Uttar Pradesh to task on Wednesday for failing to stop the problem of farm fires, ordering officials to immediately offer cash incentives as well as foot the cost of hiring machines that can take care of crop residue for farmers with small and marginal landholding.
The judges were hearing a suo motu matter – an issue they themselves took up — three days after one of the worst spells of smog choked the capital with nearrecord levels of pollution. Most of it was due to smoke from farm fires.
“This is due to your failure. Pollution is pollution. It’s bad for everybody. How can you say there is no solution? We expect little more from the responsible democratic government of the day,” justice Arun Mishra, who was on the bench along with justice Deepak Gupta, said at a hearing that went on for two hours, during which the chief secretaries of three states and the top lawyer of the Union government were chastised.
The judges said farmers must be given ₹100 per quintal of paddy procured if they did not burn the residue, and asked the administrations to pay the cost of renting machinery that eliminates paddy stubble for farmers with up to 2.5 acres of land. Between mid-October and mid-November, tens of thousands of farmers in the three states typically set fire to crop residue after harvesting as a quick and cheap way to turn the field around for sowing winter crops.
At present, farmers are entitled to hiring the requisite machinery at subsidised rates from cooperative societies, but the court was told that farmers still found the method inviable – prompting the court to order the charges to be waived entirely.
The court also asked the Centre, states and the ministries of agriculture and environment and forest to draw up a comprehensive action plan that will take care of the interests of the farmers wherever needed. It gave three months to prepare a scheme that will take care of environmental issues as well.
Through the hearing, the judges remarked on the gravity of the problem several times and rejected explanations by the representatives of the governments. “Pollution is bad. If attorney general says we have no suggestion, this cannot be the way a democratic government will function,” justice Mishra remarked.
At one point, when informed that farm fires were lower in Haryana than Punjab, the judges summoned Punjab’s chief secretary sternly. “You think only poor farmers should be penalised. And officers should go free? Is this the way you people are acting? This is sheer inaction. Call the chief secretary. We have several questions,” the judges said.
The chief secretary of Punjab, where the maximum number of instances has taken place, told the court that the state had asked the federal government for financial help to pay farmers an incentive, which would require about ₹1,800 crore – an expenditure the state could not make since, he added.