Uttar Pradesh fares better than Haryana and Punjab in stubble burning: Study

LUCKNOW: As Delhi is struggling to breathe cleaner air with Sunday’s AQI slipping to worst-ever figure at 494, a study by Union agriculture ministry has said that among the national capital’s neighbours, only Uttar Pradesh has done better with fewer incidents of stubble burning — one of the biggest contributors to air pollution — this year as compared to 2018.
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The study comes at a time when UP government has booked 158 farmers for burning paddy straw, in violation of the National Green Tribunal (NGT) norms.
It also comes at a time when Yogi government has asked its prabhari mantris (ministers in charge of districts) to visit around and photo-bomb farms where residue burning is taking place and share the pictures with nodal officers of agriculture department or district magistrates.
The report has found that UP recorded 1,428 incidents of stubble burning in the paddy harvest season in October that coincides with Diwali festivities as compared to 2,649 incidents for the corresponding month in 2018. Haryana and Punjab were worse than UP during the same duration.
The study, which has been done by Consortium for Research on Agroecosystem, Monitoring and Modelling from Space (CREAMS) Laboratories Division of Agricultural Physics, ICAR, has said that Punjab reported 18.5% increase with 22,421 firing incidents as compared to 18,922 such incidents in 2019
Haryana was a shade better than Punjab but recorded a minor increase of 2.6 % stubble fires at 4,186 as compared to 4,294 incidents in 2018.
The UP government officials have formed a CMO WhatsApp group, where each visiting IAS and prabhari minister has been asked to take photographs of the violating farmer whose field is on fire and share that on WhatsApp goup.
“Total 488 notices under the Air and Pollution Control Act of 1981 have been slapped on farmers across 11 UP districts. While 158 FIRs have been registered, overall 150 farmers have been booked and the chargesheet will be submitted in the court of law,” said a UP agriculture department official.
UP food and civil supplies minister Ranvendra Pratap Singh said that he visited about 35 districts recently and took around 53 photographs where he discovered minor instances of stubble burning but insisted them to opt for organic farming.
“I am an organic farmer in Fatehpur. And I use decomposer with cow urine to take care of stubble burning. I have been suggesting farmers in UP during my visits to practice the same and the results are fewer number of fire incidents,” a farmer said.
The UP government has also been running a programme called Million Farmer School since 2017 where each farmer from a village is asked to attend an educational institution on farming for a six-hour class along with ‘Vaigyani ki baat, kisaano ke saath’ monthly events where agriculture scientists hold talks with farmers.