New Delhi: Stubble burning incidents in Delhi-NCR, Punjab and Haryana have decreased this year due to government support for farm machinery and related interventions, Agriculture Secretary Devesh Chaturvedi said on Monday. Speaking to reporters on the sidelines of an event, he said the measures undertaken have helped curb farm-fire cases in the region.
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“Certainly...because of the policy of providing machineries and in-situ and ex-situ measures, the incidents of stubble burning in Delhi-NCR, Punjab and Haryana have reduced,” he said. Chaturvedi added that “there have hardly been incidents of stubble burning in the last 10 days.”
Stubble burning, largely carried out by farmers after harvesting, has historically been a major contributor to severe winter air pollution across Delhi and its surrounding regions.
When asked about other causes of pollution outside stubble burning, Chaturvedi said it was for other departments to respond. “If there are other reasons (for pollution), other ministries are best to say,” he said.
According to data from ICAR’s Consortium for Research on Agroecosystem Monitoring and Modeling from Space (CREAMS), overall crop residue burning incidents across six states fell by 15 percent to 27,720 between September 15 and November 23, compared with 32,596 in the same period last year.
However, the data also showed increases in some states. Burning incidents in Uttar Pradesh rose to 5,622 from 4,298, and in Rajasthan to 2,804 from 2,622. Madhya Pradesh recorded the highest number of incidents at 13,584, marginally lower than 13,796 last year.
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On November 23 alone, satellites detected 1,154 residue burning events across the six states. Madhya Pradesh accounted for 607 of these, and Uttar Pradesh 522. Punjab reported three incidents, Haryana one and Delhi none.
