With paddy harvesting almost at its fag end in Punjab, the State has witnessed just a tad lesser stubble fire incidents this kharif season and the ‘rice burnt area’ has also seen a significant drop in comparison to the last year so far.
The data from Ludhiana-based Punjab Remote Sensing Centre shows the ‘rice burnt area’ — which according to officials provides the actual ground reality about farm fires — was close to 10 lakh hectares till November 10, 2021, as against 15 lakh hectares in 2020 in the corresponding period, down by around five lakh hectares.
The Punjab Pollution Control Board data shows that till November 13, as many as 62,863 cases of farm fire occurrence have been reported. Last year, during the same period there were 75,442 such incidents.
Sangrur district has seen the highest number of farm fire cases at 7,095, while Moga with 5,839 such cases stands on the second spot. Ferozepur recorded as many as 5,592 cases, according to the PPCB. Paddy has been grown over 29.68 lakh hectares of land in Punjab this year. “Burnt area under paddy in 2021 has been estimated to be 10.34 lakh hectare up till November 10, 2021, whereas the burnt area during 2020 till November 10 was close to 15.21 lakh hectare. At the same time the paddy area harvested in 2021 till November 10 is at 28.15 lakh hectares of the total paddy area as against the 27.71 lakh hectares during the same period in year 2020,” Krunesh Garg, member secretary of the PPCB, told The Hindu on Saturday.
In Punjab, the total ‘rice burnt area’ in 2020 was 18 lakh hectares, while in 2019 it was 19 lakh hectares.
