Chief Secretary instructs to effectively control stubble burning incidents

Chandigarh, October 31:

Under the efforts of the Chief Minister Bhagwant Mann led government to curb the stubble burning incidents in the state, Chief Secretary Vijay Kumar Janjua, on Monday, instructed to effectively control the incidents of paddy stubble burning in probable areas where such incidents are likely to take place.

The Chief Secretary, while presiding over a high-level meeting on stubble management, took stock of the incidents of stubble burning with the Secretary in-charges of the districts, who recently visited their allotted districts and received suggestions from them as per the local situation. Mr. Janjua instructed to determine the responsibility of the Numbardars to prevent paddy stubble burning incidents, saying that the Numbardars should be entrusted upon the duty to sensitize farmers not to burn crop residue, and the accountability of the Numbardars should be fixed if the fire incidents take place in their concerned villages.

The Chief Secretary directed the officials to pay more attention during the next few days to prevent incidents of stubble burning and control fire incidents. “There should be more focus on hot-spots of stubble burning and the administration should be more vigilant in the villages, where cases of fire have been reported in the last few years”, said the Chief Secretary, adding that physical and satellite verification of stubble burning sites should be conducted more thoroughly. Expressing concern over the difference in number of stubble burning incidents through physical and satellite verification, he categorically asked the officials to focus on area captured by optical satellite data analysis by the Punjab Remote Sensing Center (PRSC).

The secretary-in-charges, who visited the districts recently, apprised the chief secretary that reduction in fire incidents in the state has been noticed and informed that area under which stubble was burnt till 27th October 2021 was 400.35 thousand hectares which has been brought down to 295.60 thousand hectares on the 26th October 2022. On this, the Chief Secretary directed the officials to ensure maximum awareness among farmers not to burn stubble. He said that crop residue burning Incidents on government land given on lease, will not be tolerated at any cost.

While appreciating the initiative of the Gurdaspur district administration for utilizing fire tenders for dousing farm fires, the Chief Secretary instructed all the Deputy Commissioners of the state to rope the fire tenders into service in their respective districts. Whenever stubble fire incidents to be noticed, fire tenders should be sent immediately to douse the farm fire and further action should be taken, he added.

Taking stock of the in-situ and ex-situ management of crop residue, the Chief Secretary also instructed the officials to explore the possibilities of setting up paddy straw bale plants at cluster level of villages, adding that this will help in immediate management of stubble.

Notably, the Chief Secretary had recently deputed 23 senior IAS officers as Secretary in-charges of all the 23 districts, who are consistently monitoring the situation and accordingly giving directions to the district administration. Besides this, the Chief Secretary was intensive reviewing the situation on a weekly basis to curb the stubble burning incidents.

The Chief Secretary said, Chief Minister Bhagwant Mann led government was working hard to shun the trend of stubble burning incidents this year. He reiterated the Deputy Commissioner should specially honour such farmers at the district level, who shun the practices of stubble burning so as to sensitize other farmers to curb the farm fires.