AS SC puts Punjab govt in dock, AAP says ‘only farmers not responsible’

On Tuesday, as 1,551 fresh stubble burning cases pushed the cumulative total to 20,978 this season in Punjab, and Supreme Court asking the state to put a stop to the menace, AAP chief spokesperson Malvinder Singh Kang said, “Only farmers are not responsible for the pollution that Delhi is facing today. The central government must own up its responsibility and take steps to curb all kinds of pollution in the national capital.”

The Supreme Court directed Punjab, Haryana, Uttar Pradesh, and Rajasthan to ensure that crop residue burning was stopped “forthwith”. A bench of Justices Sanjay Kishan Kaul and Sudhanshu Dhulia said Delhi can’t be made to go through this year after year. “There cannot be a political battle every time,” the bench told the counsel representing the Punjab government.

Reacting to the court’s directive, BJP national spokesperson Shehzad Poonawalla said, “After the complete expose of the AAP by the Supreme Court on Delhi’s air pollution and Punjab stubble issue, Arvind Kejriwal should apologise for making Delhi a gas chamber and stealing our right to breathe fresh air over the last 8 years”.

All that Kejriwal did was “blame others including Diwali” for the rise in pollution levels in Delhi, he charged in a post on X.

“This is like a slap on Kejriwal’s face,” BJP IT department head Amit Malviya wrote on X. He hoped that Kejriwal would now stop blaming “everyone under the sun, except his own government in Punjab and Delhi.” “People in Delhi-NCR are forced to inhale poisonous air because of one man’s incompetence, who has reduced Delhi to a gas chamber,” Malviya said in an apparent reference to Kejriwal.

The AAP leaders in Punjab, however, interpreting the SC order, said number of farm fires has so far dropped by 40 per cent as compared to last year. “The Supreme Court has hinted that only Punjab farmers are not responsible for the dire pollution situation of Delhi as the court has also asked the governments of UP, Haryana, Rajasthan and central government to take necessary measures to curb this problem,” Kang said.

Kang, flanked by party spokespersons Jagtar Singh Sanghera, Ahbaab Grewal and Babbi Badal, said that AAP government is very serious about the matters of Punjab’s air, water and environment. He said so far, farmers have been provided with 1.40 lakh crop residue management machines to manage stubble. He added that the state government also conducted massive awareness programmes in villages in order to prevent crop residue burning incidents. “Since its formation, the Mann government has constantly been taking steps to curb stubble burning in Punjab and these efforts are even showing results,” Kang said.

He further said the state government has decided to ban the sowing of the water-guzzling PUSA-44 variety of paddy crop from the next Kharif season.

The PUSA 44 variety takes more time to ripen, besides generating more crop residue. Kang sought a financial package from the Centre to promote crop diversification in the state. He said that the central government should also ensure assured prices of crops like cotton, corn and lentils so that farmers have the option to grow other crops. Kang said the Mann government in Punjab is already taking steps to promote crop diversification in the state.

A few Deputy Commissioners of the districts however said that they were working hard but the brief was to only educate the farmers against the menace. “This is not working. The employees of the administration go to visit the fields and come back empty handed. You can well imagine the situation two days ago when an employee was made to set stubble afire in Bathinda,” a DC said.

Congress’s former minister Pargat Singh contested the claim of AAP. “The AAP government did not give 1.40 lakh machines to farmers this year. It has been given over last 6 years.”

He added, “We do not want to play politics on this issue, but we want to make it clear to you that the solution to straw is not in making the farmers aware, the farmers are already aware. The question is that before the elections, the Aam Aadmi Party used to talk about compensation of Rs 2500 per acre as solution to stubble burning and now they are running away from it. Farmers are reducing stubble burning incidents every year. They need more facilities”.

In Delhi, former environment minister and senior Congress leader Jairam Ramesh said both the Centre and the states have been complicit in their “inaction”.