On 6th November, Aam Aadmi Party’s Chief National Spokesperson Priyanka Kakkar accused Haryana of the alarmingly bad air quality in Delhi. In a statement during a press conference, she said that the air in Delhi got much cleaner, with a drop of 31 per cent in pollution, the best in eight years. She added that the central government also acknowledged this in its economic survey for 2022-23.
She further asserted that there has been a reduction in stubble burning in Punjab, and the stubble being burnt in Punjab is not affecting Delhi as it is 500 KM away. However, Haryana, which is close to Delhi, is burning stubble only 100 KM away. Accusing the Khattar government of not taking any steps to reduce pollution, she added that the Haryana government had not formulated the plan to buy 100 EV buses. Furthermore, the buses that enter Delhi from Haryana run on fuel banned in Delhi.
She also claimed that the Haryana government is not supporting the industries so that they can shift to cleaner fuel like Delhi. In a nutshell, she tried to throw BJP-ruled Haryana under the bus for the pollution in Delhi’s air.
While AAP spokesperson accuses Haryana of the bad air quality in Delhi, it has to be noted that the satellite images of the last ten days tell a completely different story. Using Fire Information for the Resource Management System of NASA, OpIndia captured images of fire incidents covering Punjab, Haryana and Delhi over the past ten days. As the photos show, Haryana has very few fire incidents, while Punjab was lit up as “Christmas Lights” during the ten days. Every red dot in the images denotes one fire incident. Here are the screenshots of stubble-burning incidents from 27th October 2023 to 5th November 2023 in descending order.
From the images above, it is clear that in the last ten days, the stubble-burning incidents have at least tripped in Punjab, while similar incidents in Haryana have been very limited. AAP’s accusations against Haryana for pollution in Delhi do not fit the data available. Furthermore, Punjab Government’s own Crop Residue Burning (CRB) Information and Management System, since 1st November 2023, over 1,300 incidents were recorded every day. On 1st November, Satellite detected 1,921 incidents in Punjab, on 2nd November, 1,668 incidents were detected, on 3rd November, 1,551 incidents were detected; and on 4th November, 1,360 incidents were detected. The number almost tripled in just one day as on 5th November, 3,230 incidents were detected. While the claims that the incidents have substantially reduced compared to subsequent days in 2022 and 2021 that does not mean that stubble burning in Punjab has no effect on Delhi’s air quality.
Not to forget, in November 2022, Last year, CM Bhagwant Mann and Kejriwal held a joint press conference where CM Mann took responsibility for solving the stubble-burning problem by November 2023.
In the same month, Kejriwal categorically said that the stubble that is burnt in Punjab is responsible for pollution in “some areas of North India”. He never said it does not affect Delhi’s air quality.
Arvind Kejriwal claimed there was solution to stubble burning
Before coming to power in Punjab, Delhi’s Chief Minister and AAP’s chief, Arvind Kejriwal, claimed they had a solution for the problem of stubble burning. In November 2020, Kejriwal claimed that the Delhi government found a solution for stubble burning in association with the Indian Agriculture Research Institute (IARI) in Pusa. He claimed that the solution developed by the scientists at Pusa would convert the residual stubble into manure that would reduce the need to burn them. He repeatedly urged the Punjab and Haryana governments to use the solution. Several ads were issued, and videos were made praising the solution.
He said, “Now that we have this solution, will all state governments and central agencies adopt it to act on it and resolve the Delhi-NCR pollution menace?”
“If you spray this solution on your fields, within 20 days, the stubble will melt and turn into manure that will be beneficial for the agricultural fields. Farmers can now stop burning the stubble, which also spoils the farmlands apart from causing smoke and pollution,” Kejriwal added.
In September 2020, he claimed his government would spray the solution for free to stop stubble burning in Delhi. If he could do it, why couldn’t Bhagwant Mann replicate the “free spray” scheme in Punjab for all farmers? As Kejriwal claimed, it was a cheap solution. It could have worked, but alas.
Only ads no ‘solution’
In May 2022, OpIndia reported that the Delhi government allocated over Rs 23 crores for advertising air pollution mitigation. However, only a few lakhs were spent distributing the solution developed to tackle stubble manace. In 2020-21, the AAP-led Delhi government spent just Rs 40,000 on stubble-to-compost chemicals while investing Rs 15.8 crores on advertisements. Similarly, in 2021-22, 2.04 lakh was spent on decomposer solutions, while Rs 7.47 crore was spent on ads. In short, over Rs 23 crores, nearly 99 per cent of the budget, was spent on promotion, revealing a significant between funding for awareness and actual pollution reduction measures.
Kejriwal accused Punjab of polluting Delhi air for years
Interestingly, in November 2019, when AAP was not controlling the Punjab government, Arvind Kejriwal quoted AAP leader Jasmine Shah and accused neighbouring states of Punjab, Haryana and UP of polluting Delhi. In 2019, Punjab was blamed for Delhi’s pollution, but now, when AAP is ruling Punjab, somehow, the stubble-burning incidents do not affect Delhi’s AQI. Kejriwal said, “A very strong correlation can be seen between stubble burning and the spike in air pollution in North India. As soon as stubble burning began in the first week of Oct, the AQI started rising. Now that burning is coming to an end, air quality is also improving.”
Again in November 2019, he accused the Haryana and Punjab governments of forcing farmers to burn stubble.
In September 2021, he again praised the solution developed by Pusa scientists and urged the Punjab, Haryana and UP governments to provide the solution to the farmers in their states.
Interestingly, he and Punjab CM Bhagwant Mann accused the central government of not providing funds to give to the farmers as an incentive for not burning stubble. They wanted the Central government to pay Rs 1,500 while the Punjab and Delhi governments would pay Rs 500 each. The central government categorically refused to bear the cost. He further claimed to provide machines to the farmers. However, the stubble-burning incidents continued to happen in 2022 and 2023.
Punjab is burning 10 times more stubble than Haryana
As per Hindustan report, Punjab’s farmers are burning stubble ten times more than Haryana. Only 1,500 incidents of stubble burning were reported in Haryana across the season compared to 17,000+ incidents in Punjab. While there were 3,230 incidents reported in Punjab on 5th November, Haryana reported only 109 such incidents.