389 incidents despite 968 villages resolve not to burn stubble in Ludhiana district

Nitin Jain

Tribune News Service

Ludhiana, October 25

In a first, all 968 villages covered under 941 panchayats and 367 primary agriculture cooperative societies (PACS) in Ludhiana district have resolved not to let anyone burn crop residue in their respective jurisdictions, the administration has confirmed.

Field fires this season

The Punjab Remote Sensing Centre (PRSC) in Ludhiana has this paddy season so far reported maximum of 1,415 field fires in Tarn Taran followed by 945 in Amritsar, 484 in Patiala, 394 in Gurdaspur and 389 in Ludhiana.

Still, 389 incidents of stubble burning have so far been reported from various parts of the district, the official figures have revealed.

Taking cognisance of environmental hazards, the district administration has stepped up vigil and taken various steps to check the menace.

Deputy Commissioner Varinder Kumar Sharma told The Tribune here on Monday that 725 key district functionaries had been deployed to prevent field fires and take action against offenders. These included eight SDMs, seven tehsildars, 160 patwaris, nine DSPs, 142 cluster officers, 390 nodal officers and nine AEEs of the PPCB.

Login IDs of all key functionaries, including nodal officers, have been made for reporting the field fires online, for which training was also imparted to them.

The nodal officers were mandated to visit the spot of the fire incident within 24 hours of getting information. “Whenever they click for the location, the Google map/ iMap guides them to the exact spot of the fire incident captured by the satellite/ PRSC,” he said.

Environmental compensation at the rate of Rs 2,500 per fire incident was imposed in 26 cases, besides making red entry in the khasra girdawari (revenue records) of 14 violators.

Divulging the action-taken report, the ADC (General), Rahul Chaba, said 190 sites had been visited by special teams constituted for the purpose to check stubble burning in the past 48 hours, of which no crop residue burning was observed at 155 sites.

For creating mass awareness regarding paddy stubble in the villages, three mobile vans had been deployed to cover 600 of the total 968 villages in the district.

Besides, cluster-wise farmers’ camps, with each cluster comprising six to seven villages, were being organised to disseminate the message of ill-effects of stubble burning and benefits of proper paddy stubble management in a scientific manner.

Chaba said 64 farmers’ camps had so far been held, covering 500 villages. Besides, announcements were made at 102 public places, including village gurdwaras.

A television programme, ‘Mera Pind, Mera Khet’ (My village, my field) was recorded at Mullanpur last week.

Also, banners and hoardings have been displayed at vantage locations in villages across the district.

Management measures

As many as 11,000 saplings have been planted in the villages so far while 4,884 paddy crop residue management (CRM) machines have been given at subsidised cost to various cooperative societies in the villages in the past three years. Besides, 489 additional machines have been approved for distribution among 19 farmers, 30 village panchayats, 105 cooperative societies and 335 farmer groups.

Of these 489 machines, 220 machines have already been purchased and were being distributed.

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