With nearly 200 fresh stubble-burning incidents reported in Punjab on Monday, the cumulative tally this paddy harvesting season rose to 4,657, according to the latest monitoring report of the Commission for Air Quality Management (CAQM).
Mishra said the Delhi government had examined satellite data showing a sharp rise in reported fire locations in Punjab on Diwali compared with the preceding three days. The sudden surge also triggered a political blame-game, with the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-led Delhi government alleging a tenfold increase in farm fires on Diwali, while the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP), which governs Punjab, accused it of deflecting attention from its failure to curb firecracker use in Delhi . Have some shame and stop committing fraud with Delhi’s AQI data. Bharadwaj accused the Delhi government of manipulating pollution data and endangering lives by shutting down air-quality monitoring stations overnight and spraying water around them. He also alleged that monitoring stations had been installed near green areas and that water was being sprinkled around them to influence readings. “Every year, the central government gives crores of rupees to the Punjab government for managing stubble burning. Where does the money go?
“Even if your Punjab theory is believed, smoke takes 2-3 days to travel from Punjab to Delhi. Stubble burnt on Diwali night in Punjab cannot reach Delhi in 10 minutes. He also accused the Punjab government, in power since 2022, of failing to take concrete steps to prevent stubble burning.
Because of your pollution data manipulation,” he said in a post on X, people can get very sick and even die.
At a press conference on Monday, Delhi cabinet minister Kapil Mishra described the sudden spike in stubble-burning incidents on Diwali as “suspicious” and urged Punjab chief minister Bhagwant Mann to order an investigation and register FIRs wherever fields were deliberately set on fire. “Satellite data showed around 100 to 125 fire incidents each on November 5, 6 and 7, while the figure rose to nearly 1,200 on November 8,” he said. The Punjab government should tell us,” he said, alleging that people associated with the AAP were deliberately setting agricultural fields on fire as part of a conspiracy.
