Paddy residue burning in region continues unabated

Bathinda/Karnal/Patiala: The crop residue burning is going unabated in Punjab and Haryana. While Punjab recorded 1,893 stubble burning cases on Thursday taking the count to 36,761, Haryana registered 35 incidents of stubble burning across the state on Thursday, taking the overall count this season to 2,728.
The only solace for Punjab is that the stubble burning cases in the ongoing paddy harvesting season are much less than the previous two years. Against 1,893 cases on Thursday, 3,508 burning cases were reported on the day in 2020 and 4,008 cases on the day in 2021. Against the 36,761 burning cases in the ongoing season these were 66,362 in 2020 and 51,417 in 2021.

The four districts reported over 100 cases each while four districts reported over 200 cases each with maximum 299 burning cases reported from Moga district. While in Haryana, Kaithal district witnessed the highest stubble burning cases with 621 incidents and Fatehabad is in the second position with 573 incidents.
Meanwhile, air quality in 18 Haryana cities ranged from ‘very poor’ to ‘poor’ and Punjab too still breathes ‘poor’ air. The average AQI recorded on Thursday in Punjab is 220 whereas on Wednesday the state recorded 344 AQI, the maximum in this season so far. In Haryana, Kurukshetra AQI was recorded at 399 — highest in the state and only two notches below ‘severe’ category. It was followed by the GT belt districts including Kaithal (395), Panipat (384), Karnal (369), Sonipat (365), and Ambala (336). The air quality was in the poor category in Fatehabad (299), Yamunanagar (296), Jind (293), Faridabad (292), Hisar (252), Dharuhera (243), Gurgaon (237), Manesar (236), Rohtak (223), Bahadurgarh (221), Panchkula (210), and Bhiwani (209). tnn