over-7-000-farm-fires-put-punjab-in-chokehold

Punjab has recorded fresh 418 incidents of stubble burning, crossing the 7,000 mark as of Monday, November 11. With this, the air quality remains 'poor' in various parts of Punjab and Haryana, meanwhile, Chandigarh's AQI remained 'very poor', with people struggling to breathe.

 

Punjab Remote Sensing Centre data reveals that the state has seen a total of 7,029 farm fire incidents from September 15 to November 11.

 

Among the districts, Sangrur on Monday reported 103 farm fires, the maximum in the state, followed by 72 in Ferozepur, 46 in Muktsar, 40 in Moga, 37 in Mansa, 29 in Faridkot and 24 in Bathinda, the data showed.

 

Gurdaspur and SBS Nagar districts witnessed the lowest number of farm fires at one each, the data states.

 

Punjab has seen an addition of around 3,000 farm fire incidents since November 3.

 

Chandigarh recorded an AQI of 331 at 7 pm, according to the Central Pollution Control Board's Sameer App, which provides hourly updates.

Among places in Haryana, the AQI in Jind was 286, Gurugram (284), Charkhi Dadri (283), Bhiwani (272), Bahadurgarh (271), Sonipat (254), Yamunanagar (237), Panchkula (232) and Rohtak (226).

 

In Punjab, the AQI was 245 in Mandi Gobindgarh, 222 in Jalandhar, 213 in Amritsar, and 203 each in Ludhiana and Patiala.

 

An AQI between zero and 50 is considered 'good', 51 and 100 'satisfactory', 101 and 200 'moderate', 201 and 300 'poor', 301 and 400 'very poor', 401 and 450 'severe', and above 450 'severe plus'.

 

Stubble burning in Punjab and Haryana is often blamed for the rise in air pollution in Delhi after harvesting of the paddy crop in October and November.

 

As the window for the Rabi crop, wheat is very short after paddy harvest, some farmers set their fields on fire to quickly clear off the crop residue for sowing the next crop. If looked at the previous year's data, Punjab reported 36,663 farm fire cases, registering a 26 per cent drop in such incidents as compared to 2022, when the state recorded 49,922 farm fires. In 2021, 71,304 stubble-burning cases were recorded, 76,590 in 2020, 55,210 in 2019, and 50,590 in 2018.