DC, SSP urge farmers to stop burning stubble

Deputy Commissioner (DC) Aashika Jain and Senior Superintendent of Police (SSP) Deepak Pareek today met farmers to urge them to curb farm fires. The two visited Rurkee Pukhta, Gharuan, Mamupur and Kurali villages on Thursday and exhorted the farmers to avoid burning stubble.

Interacting with farmers, former panches, sarpanches and nambardars of the adjoining villages DC Jain said as per the strict directives of the Supreme Court, National Green Tribunal (NGT) and Commission for Air Quality Management in the National Capital Region (NCR) and adjoining areas, the government had set a zero tolerance policy towards stubble burning. She said burning stubble must be must avoided as subsidised machinery to manage it was already available in bulk across the district.

She said the district had arranged a total of 40 balers and rakes which were double than last year. She urged farmers to extract the maximum benefit from these machines to dispose stubble.

She said the district had the capacity of disposing 2 lakh MT of stubble bales, while the total production was 1.25 lakh MT. She said the administration had singled out 33 villages in the district where close monitoring would be carried out.

SSP Pareek, while interacting with the farmers, who were yet to start harvesting, urged them to not burn stubble and to manage it by using the machinery available in their proximity. He said police personnel had been asked to help farmers arrange the machinery with the help of local civil authorities to thwart incidents of farm fires in their area. Apprising them of the stringent orders of the Supreme Court and the NGT, he said that this time violators would not be spared. Seeking their cooperation to curb the malpractice of setting stubble on fire the SSP said it was the collective responsibility of society to protect the environment from the pollution caused by farm fires.

The DC and The SSP were accompanied by Kharar SDM Gurminder Singh and Kharar-1 DSP Karan Sandhu.