Stubble burning: 81 cases detected in Punjab’s Doaba region, only three farmers fined

Even as the National Green Tribunal (NGT) has banned stubble burning, farmers continue to indulge in the practice in the region. Sample this: Over the past 15 days starting April 15, the Punjab Remote Sensing Centre (PRSC), based in Ludhiana, has detected 81 cases in the Doaba region. The cases detected in Kapurthala, Hoshiarpur, Jalandhar and Nawanshahr are 40, 22, 15, 4, respectively.

Precious little action

Ignoring 78 alerts, the Punjab Pollution Control Board authorities have only penalised three farmers, two of Rs 2,500 and one of Rs 5,000.

Executive engineer (XEN) Arun Kakkar, incharge Jalandhar and Kapurthala districts, said, “We have penalised two farmers of Jalandhar while 35 cases from Kapurthala were reported on Monday night.”

“Officials from the revenue department are verifying the cases after which we will impose a penalty on the violators,” he said.

Executive engineer (XEN) Ashok Garg, looking after Hoshiarpur and Nawanshahr districts, said only one farmer from Hoshiarpur had been penalised.

The state government’s inaction is particularly glaring, as NGT’s order mentions, “The state government will provide machines, mechanism and equipment or its cost to the farmers to ensure that agricultural residue in the field is removed, collected and stored at appropriate identified sites in each district.”

Officials said as the government failed to provide any help to the farmers, the latter were left with no other option but to burn the stubble.

Officials in the agriculture department said,”Stubble burning has just started and if the authorities failed to tighten the noose, the number of cases will rise in future.”

“Majority of farmers are busy in selling crop, soon they will set fields on fire to clear farms of stubble,” they said.