Wheat harvesting almost over, only 35 farm fire incidents in Ludhiana district so far

Tribune News Service

Nitin Jain

Ludhiana, May 6

As the current wheat harvesting season, popularly known as Rabi, was nearing to a close with over 90 per cent crop already harvested, only 35 farm fires have been reported in Ludhiana district so far, which were lowest-ever in the past nine years, official figures have confirmed.

It has, however, not shown any positive impact on the air quality, which continues to be in the poor category.

The sharp decline in the stubble burning cases could be gauged from the fact that the state’s biggest and largest district, in terms of area and population, had never reported less than 517 incidents of farm fires with the highest going up to 1,035 during the Rabi season in past years.

The data compiled by the Punjab Remote Sensing Centre (PRSC), here, a copy of which is available with The Tribune, showed that Ludhiana has reported the maximum daily count of 14 farm fires this season on May 2 while not even a single incident of stubble burning was captured on 25 days during the past 36 days of the Rabi season, which began on April 1.

The day-wise count revealed that five farm fires were reported in the district on May 5, 4 on May 4, 7 on May 3, 14 on May 2, 3 on April 26, one each on April 24 and 2, with no incident of crop residue burning captured on other days since April 1.

The year-wise data showed that 889 farm fire cases were reported in Ludhiana in 2023, 950 in 2022, 517 in 2021, 1,019 in 2020, 1,035 in 2019, 730 in 2018, 875 in 2017 and 918 cases of stubble burning were captured in the district in 2016.

When it comes to other districts, as many as 740 cases of crop residue burning have been reported across the state from April 1 till May 5.

On Sunday, as many as 168 farm fires were captured across 23 districts in the state, with maximum of 25 cases reported in Kapurthala, and minimum of one incident was noted in Nawanshahr.

Among other districts, Barnala had reported three stubble burning cases on Sunday, Bathinda 13, Faridkot six, Fazilka 12, Ferozepur 19, Gurdaspur seven, Hoshiarpur 15, Malerkotla two, Mansa eight, Moga five, Muktsar three, Pathankot two, Patiala 24, Ropar three, Sangrur seven, Mohali two, and Tarn Taran had captured six incidents of farm fires on May 5.

However, the air pollution in the state’s industrial and business capital continues to be in the “poor” category for the past few days as the air quality index (AQI) has gone up to 165 on Monday, which was considered “unhealthy for sensitive groups only”, with PM2.5 concentration in Ludhiana air currently 5.5 times above the World Health Organisation (WHO) annual air quality guideline value.

Result of sustained drives, says DC

“The sustained awareness, education and enforcement drives to sensitise all the stakeholders involved have shown results as incidents of stubble burning have touched the lowest-ever count this season so far. We are committed to provide a clean and safe environment to the district residents while keeping a check on the sources of pollution,” said Sakshi Sawhney, DC

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#Agriculture #Environment #Farm Fires #Pollution #Stubble Burning