Stubble burning up 10 times in past fortnight in Ludhiana district

Nitin Jain

Tribune News Service

Ludhiana, November 8

Fire is raging in the fields of Ludhiana. This seems apt to describe the current situation of stubble burning, which has gone up 10 times in the past fortnight, the official figures have confirmed.

From only 389 till October 25, the farm fire incidents in the state’s biggest and largest district in terms of area and population have touched 3,252 on November 8, the data compiled by the Punjab Remote Sensing Centre (PRSC) in Ludhiana has revealed.

Officialspeak

We have adopted a two-pronged strategy involving awareness and enforcement. Besides motivating peasants against stubble burning, 725 key district functionaries have been deployed to prevent field fires and take action against the offenders. These include eight SDMs, seven tehsildars, 160 patwaris, nine DSPs, 142 cluster officers, 390 nodal officers and 9 AEEs of PPCB. Varinder Kumar Sharma, Deputy Commissioner

This has caused a dense envelope of smog in the district, leaving the air quality “very poor” and “poor” on a day-to-day basis, leading to serious breathing problems to residents, especially those suffering from bronchitis and heart ailments.

The ground situation of crop residue burning also belies the resolutions adopted by all 968 village panchayats in the district against stubble burning. In a first-of-its-kind initiative, all 968 villages covered under 941 panchayats and 367 primary agriculture cooperative societies (PACS) in Ludhiana district had last month resolved not to let anyone burn crop residue in their respective jurisdictions.

However, all such claims went up in the smoke following the recent spurt in the incidence of farm fires.

With this, Ludhiana ranked the fifth worst-hit district when it comes to crop residue burning in the state. While Sangrur topped the state with the highest of 4,093 farm fires, Ferozepur stood second with 4,080 stubble burning cases. Tarn Taran ranked third with 3,546 crop residue burning incidents, while Moga remained fourth with 3,379 farm fires till Monday.

On Monday itself, Ludhiana district recorded 398 stubble burning cases during the past 24 hours, which were fourth highest after Sangrur, which reported the maximum of 625, followed by Moga 580 and Ferozepur 406.

If the present trend of rising farm fires continues unabated, it may break the records of previous four years in Ludhiana district when a total of 4,330 cases of crop residue burning were recorded during the entire paddy harvesting season from September 15 to November 30 in 2020, followed by 2,532 in 2019, 2,481 in 2018 and 3,239 in 2017. However, the district had reported the highest of 7,697 farm fire incidents.

The spike in the stubble burning cases was witnessed since November 4 when 292 fire events, which were the highest daily count reported by any district in the state, were recorded followed by 455 on November 5, 398 on November 6 and 394 on November 7.

This has left Ludhiana the third most-polluted city in Punjab on Monday with air quality index (AQI) level touching 297, which falls under the “poor” category. Among 10 most-polluted cities, Jalandhar remained the worst-hit with AQI 356 followed by Bathinda with AQI 315, Faridkot 238, Mandi Gobindgarh 195, Patiala 177, Dhariwal 162, Khanna 155, Ropar 153 and Amritsar 151.

“While the poor air quality causes breathing discomfort to most people on prolonged exposure, the very poor AQI leads to respiratory illness,” opined an expert Dr Ranjana Agrawal.

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