With the level of air pollution deteriorating further in the national capital region, the Union ministry for environment, forest and climate change (EF&CC) will take stock of the short and long-term measures with the state officials of Delhi, Punjab, Haryana, Rajasthan and Uttar Pradesh. The meeting scheduled for Friday will be held under the chairmanship of the secretary, EF&CC.
The officials are likely to deliberate upon the large scale awareness campaigns on the impact of open burning of biomass residue in their respective states. They will also debate upon the measures that the district machineries had taken to maintain a strict vigil over instances of stubble burning and effective preventive action thereafter.
Earlier at a meeting held by the Central Pollution Control Board, the Delhi Pollution Control Committee had agreed to start air quality monitoring in rural areas to access the impact of the crop residue burning in the neighbouring states on the ambient air quality and co-relate the same with the National Remote Sensing Agency (NRSA) and Nasa imagery.
It is learnt that the CPCB will deliberate upon the initiatives it had made with the NRSA to obtain satellite imagery on a daily basis to study the air movement pattern from the burning of the crop residue. The officials will be briefed about the linkage which is to be provided to the Pollution Control Committees of various states in the NCR for identification of hot spots and subsequent action taken by the local bodies.
A senior officer said that all the state agencies would be required to provide details about the action they had taken to implement the directions of the National Greet Tribunal to bring down pollution levels in the NCR of Delhi.
The Punjab Pollution Control Board is expected to deliberate upon the cases which have been registered against the farmers for burning paddy in the fields during the past three years. Studies based on the satellite imagery of the Ludhiana-based Punjab Sensing Centre indicate there is about 40 per cent reduction in paddy straw burning in the state.
The agriculture and farmers welfare department in Haryana held as many as 140 inter-state and about 3,600 district level training camps on the harmful effects of straw burning and alternate measures available to stop biomass burning.
