The Chief Secretaries of Delhi, Haryana, Punjab, and Uttar Pradesh participated in a third round of video conferencing meetings with the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) on Friday. They were asked to provide a thorough report on how to reduce air pollution in the Delhi-NCR region.
Under the direction of NHRC Chairman Justice Arun Kumar Mishra, a discussion was held via video conference with the chief secretaries of four states regarding air pollution as the national capital and the NCR region continue to be engulfed in a thick layer of haze.
To address air pollution in Delhi NCR, the chief secretaries of Punjab, Haryana, Delhi, and Uttar Pradesh were called to the last hearing.
While sharing the report at the meeting today, all of the secretaries offered a lot more information on the same topics. The date of the upcoming hearing is now November 25.
While speaking to ANI, NHRC spokesperson Jaimini Kumar Srivastava said that a detailed discussion was held on stubble burning which is one of the biggest reasons for the bad air quality.
“The Commission had a discussion on how to provide the equipment to the poor farmers at the panchayat and body level free of cost so that they can harvest the paddy properly on time. Those who have the capacity to buy equipment should be made available at low cost so that farmers are not forced to burn stubble,” he said.
Srivastava further said that apart from this, the Commission also asked the governments to provide proper equipment to the sanitation workers of the states.
“Be it the waste of hospitals or the dust on the roads, due to which air pollution increases, it should be managed. The Commission has asked for the details of how many mechanized devices are there to cope with the pollution caused by stubble burning and in what capacity they are being ordered. In many states of the country, various topics like pollution caused by stubble burning and deaths of sanitation workers, etc. were discussed with the Chief Secretaries of the states and instructions were also given to prevent and reduce pollution,” NHRC spokesperson said.
After hearing the statements of the individual state’s chief secretaries, the Commission reprimanded the governments of Punjab, Haryana, Delhi, and Uttar Pradesh, holding them accountable for poor management of “stubble burning.”
“The Commission, after considering the responses of the concerned States and the Government of NCT of Delhi, and the deliberations thereon is of the opinion that the farmers are burning stubble under compulsion,” NHRC said in a press release.
The National Human Rights Commission, which handed down the ruling, said that the governments of the states named above did not resolve the recurrent issue of stubble burning, which worsened the air quality.
“The State Governments have to provide harvest machines to get rid of those stubbles but they have failed to provide an adequate number of requisite machines and other measures, as a result, farmers were forced to burn the stubbles, causing pollution,” the commission said, adding that none of the States can blame the farmers for stubble burning, instead, it is due to the failure of all four State Governments that the stubble burning is happening in the four States causing enormous pollutants in the air.