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Centre, Punjab at odds over stubble burning
Why in news?
- With paddy harvesting at its fag end in the key grain producing State of Punjab, both the Central and State governments released data on stubble burning on 22 Nov, but with starkly different narratives.
More in news
- Union Agriculture Minister Narendra Singh Tomar told the Rajya Sabha:
(1) Events of stubble burning had declined by 19% this year, including a 8% reduction in Punjab, 25.1% in Haryana and 36.8% drop in Uttar Pradesh .
(2) Improvement credited to the Rs. 1,151.8 crore Centrally funded scheme to distribute stubble management machines to farmers as well as State schemes to compensate farmers who did not burn their fields.
- Punjab’s Pollution Control Board (PCB) data showed an increase of 2.3% in the number of incidents.
- The devil is in the detail.
(1) Source of Centre’s- Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR), which monitors stubble burning in Punjab, Haryana & U.P using satellite data and counts the number of incidents from the beginning of October.
(2) PCB routinely counts stubble burning incidents from September 24, given that paddy harvesting begins in early to mid-Sept.
(a) It recorded 52,154 incidents between September 24 and November 21, compared with 50,970 in the year earlier period.
- Data differs slightly even over a comparable period
(1) Centre’s data shows 27,366 incidents Nov 2019,
(2) while the State has recorded 30,017 incidents.
- The Punjab government acknowledged that the increase in incidents showed that some farmers continued to defy the ban on burning crop residue and said it was optimistic that the “burnt area” figure would show improvement.
Sources
The Hindu