Stubble burning in Punjab: 932 FIRs against farmers since Nov 8, Rs 1.67 crore fine imposed in 7,000 cases

He said concerted efforts by the Punjab Police to prevent stubble burning have yielded significant results as case of farm fire fell “drastically” in the past two days. On Sunday and Saturday, Punjab recorded 740 and 637 farm fire cases respectively.

On the same day in 2021 and 2022, Punjab had reported 448 and 426 farm fires, respectively.

With fresh farm incidents, the total number of such cases since September 15 has risen to 34,459, according to the Punjab Remote Sensing Centre data.

Meanwhile, the air quality remained in ‘very poor’ and ‘poor’ categories in most parts of Haryana and Punjab on Sunday.

Paddy straw burning in Punjab and Haryana is considered one of the reasons behind the alarming spike in air pollution levels in the national capital in October and November.

Amid a spike in pollution levels in Delhi-NCR, the Supreme Court on November 7 had directed Punjab, Haryana, Uttar Pradesh and Rajasthan to ensure crop residue burning was stopped “forthwith”, saying it cannot let “people die” due to pollution.

Thereafter, DGP Gaurav Yadav appointed Arpit Shukla as the police nodal officer to monitor action against stubble burning. In a statement, Shukla said legal action is being initiated against those found burning stubble.

The Punjab police chief has also been holding daily meetings with senior officers, range officers, police commissioners, senior superintendents of police and station house officers to review stubble burning cases and issued show cause notices to SSPs of those districts, which have witnessed a high stubble burning cases.

As many as 1,072 flying squads comprising police and civil officials have been keeping vigil, while senior police officials have been holding meetings with farmer leaders at a district level. At least 2,189 such meetings have been held since November 8.