Amid Delhi’s
worsening air quality and escalating pollution, the Supreme Court slammed the
Punjab Government over stubble burning and directed it to stop.
The Apex Court observed
that there can’t be a political battle all the time.
“We want it
(stubble burning) stopped. We don’t know how you do it, it’s your job. But it
must be stopped. Something has to be done immediately,” the Supreme Court told
the Punjab Government.
Justice Sanjay
Kishan Kaul, hearing air pollution matters, noticed that while travelling
through Punjab over the weekend, he saw widespread fires on both sides of the
road.
A Bench of
justices Kaul and Sudhanshu Dhulia ordered Punjab, Delhi, Uttar Pradesh and
Rajasthan to stop stubble burning “forthwith”, making chief secretaries and
director general of police concerned responsible for overseeing the
implementation of the court direction.
Apart from this, the
top court put the onus on the Centre, suggesting it should stop supporting
minimum support price (MSP) for paddy in Punjab and should rather find ways to
make farmers shift to alternative crops.
“The government
has been propagating millets. Why not promote it?” the court said.
It adjourned the
hearing till Friday.
Reportedly, in Punjab
over 2,000 farm fires occurred even as many parts of Haryana saw air quality
indices in the ‘severe’ and ‘very poor’ categories while it was ‘poor’ in areas
of the border State.
As farmers
continued to set crop residue ablaze, 2,060 fresh stubble-burning incidents
were recorded in Punjab, taking the total number of such cases to 19,463 till
Monday, as per Ludhiana-based Punjab Remote Sensing Centre data.
Stubble-burning
incidents reported from November 1 till November 6 constitute 61 per cent of
the total such cases in the present season.
The total
stubble-burning incidents of 19,463 registered from September 15 till November
6 was 35 per cent less than 29,999 such cases in the corresponding period last
year, the data stated. The State had reported 32,734 farm fires during the same
period in 2021.
Meanwhile, Haryana’s
Fatehabad recorded an air quality index (AQI) of 425, followed by Faridabad at
412, Sonipat at 412, Jind 385, Hisar 380, Gurugram 376, Kaithal 370, Narnaul
340, Bhiwani 334, Rohtak 326 and Sirsa 308.
In Punjab,
Amritsar reported an AQI at 329, followed by Bathinda at 297, Ludhiana 283,
Mandi Gobindgarh 266, Jalandhar 231, Khanna 228 and Patiala 220. Union
Territory Chandigarh, the joint capital of Punjab and Haryana, saw an AQI of
149.
Paddy straw
burning in Punjab and Haryana is considered one of the major reasons behind the
alarming spike in air pollution levels in Delhi in October and November.
On Tuesday, the
top court also directed Rajasthan and other States to follow its earlier order
on the issue relating to firecrackers during the festive season. The Supreme
Court directed the Rajasthan Government to take steps to minimise air
pollution, especially during the festival, adding that it is everyone’s duty to
manage pollution.
“When it comes to
pollution, there is a wrong perception it is the duty of courts. But it has to
be everybody’s duty,” the court said.
Agencies
