Haryana govt completes pilot project on addressing stubble burning incidents in Karnal

By- Amit Kumar
KARNAL: With a motive to tackle the stubble burning, the Haryana government has completed the pilot project in the various villages of Karnal district which have been declared under red-zone.
An official claimed that the pilot climate leadership project on ‘Crop Residue Management’ (CRM), helped to reduce stubble burning incidents and manage the air pollution situation in the region, resulted in a 69 per cent reduction in stubble burning incidents.
The official stated that this initiative included mobilising farmers, communities, and private sector partners, an important element of the outreach was a multilingual mobile application ‘Krishi Yantra Sathi’. It was designed to bring together all the relevant stakeholders, including local farmers, various Custom Hiring Centers (CHC), and Farmer Producer Organisations (FPO).
“With proof of concept and a working, replicable model, we are planning to scale the initiative in the state of Haryana to cover 8 districts, namely, Fatehabad, Sirsa, Jind, Kaithal, Kurukshetra, Ambala, Yamuna Nagar, and Karnal, which are responsible for approximately 90 percent of fires in the state,” said Narhari Bangar, Director, Department of Agriculture and Farmers’ Welfare,a Haryana.
“With our department’s due diligence and proactiveness, 702 CHCs and 3860 individual farmers received around Rs 90 crores CRM ex-situ and in-situ equipment subsidies since 2018, and an estimate of Rs 18 crores worth of equipment subsidy will be given for the current year. Additionally, every farmer of Karnal district who adopted the “Parali Fasal Prabandhan” will receive a subsidy of Rs 1000 per acre,” said Aditya Partap Dabas, Deputy Director, Department of Agriculture and Farmers’ Welfare, Karnal.