Deputy Commissioner Mrs Aashika Jain holding a joint meeting of Police and Civil officials along with SSP Deepak Pareek, asked the officials to visit the farmers to curb the farm fire incidents in advance before the onset of the harvesting season of paddy. Taking a joint meeting of the police and civil offices of the district deputed for reducing the previous year’s 133 cases to zero this time, the Deputy Commissioner said that as per the strict orders of the Hon’ble Apex Court of India and National Green Tribunal, it is our primary responsibility to prevent the crop residue burning.
She said that the district has a capacity of 2 lakh MT consumption of crop residue with its industrial boilers against the production of 1.25 lakh MT paddy straw. Despite that, we have to face the problem of crop residue burning every year, She added. The Deputy Commissioner directed the Sub Divisional Magistrates, Chief Agriculture Officer and Deputy Registrar Cooperative Societies to map all the crop residue management machinery including balers with the farmers and industrial units to dispose of the stubble without setting it on fire on fields.
She asked the SDMs to depute the Nodal Officer (for each village) and Cluster Officers (after a cluster of 15 villages each) to the field to sensitise the farmers to the hazards of farm fires and dispose of them with the available machinery. Apart from that the villages where the farm fire incidents were reported the previous year would be focused more attentively and the farmers would be given the alternative to manage stubble without setting it on fire.
She urged her police counterpart, SSP Deepak Pareek to keep check on the farm fire incidents with the help of local SHOs and alert the people of the strict guidelines and regulations issued by the Supreme Court and NGT. She said that in case anyone repeatedly violates the norms, then stringent action should be taken against that person.
The Deputy Commissioner asked the SDMs to prepare a thorough plan to manage the stubble without setting it on fire and help the farmers get the machinery to their doorsteps. The DC asked the SDM Derabassi to keep check in the area as the Derabassi always witnesses advanced harvesting seasons in the areas where farmers are to sow the potato crop.
SSP Deepak Pareek while addressing the meeting directed the SP (Rural) and DSPs present in the meeting to go by strict instructions of the Supreme Court and NGT ensuring zero incidents of farm fires. He asked the DSPs to support their civil counterparts in their respective sub-divisions to make the district free of farm fire incidents.
The officers present in the meeting included ADC (G) Viraj S Tidke, ADC (Rural Development) Sonam Chaudhary, SDMs Dr Himanshu Gupta (Derabassi), Deepankar Garg (Mohali) and Gurmander Singh (Kharar) besides SP (Rural) Manpreet Singh, DSP Zirakpur Jaspinder Singh, ASP Derabassi Jayant Puri, DSP (H) Rajesh Hastir, SHO Banur Gursewak Singh, Chief Agriculture Officer Dr Gurmail Singh and Deputy Registrar Cooperative Societies Gurbir Singh Dhillon, Executive Engineer PPCB Rantej Sharma and other department officers.