Incidents of stubble burning in the agriculturefields around Delhi have received a lot of policy attention in recent years, as these events exacerbated air pollution in the city. While there has been a significant drop in such instances across all northern states this season, the “burnt area” (total field area where the crop residues are set on fire) has remained almost the same.
The government at the Centre and the states concerned and even the corporate sector initiated several measures aimed at reducing the annual practice of paddy stubble burning in Punjab and Haryana through ‘in-situ’ (management in the field) and ‘ex-situ’ (treating stubble outside the field). However, the still-large ‘burnt area’ implies not only lack of efficiency of these measures in checking a worsensing of air quality, but also a serious depletion of organic matter in the soil, with consequences for its nutrient content.
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According to official sources, Rs 4,000 crore has been allocated to Punjab and Haryana over the last few years to manage and treat paddy stubble. There’s still work to be done to eliminate farm fires, which most farmers still find the most effective way to dispose of crop materials to prepare the fields for next sowing season.
The environment ministry has acknowledged that stubble burning remains an ‘episodic’ yet significant contributor to winter pollution in Delhi-NCR, alongside vehicular emissions, industrial pollution, waste burning, construction dust, landfill fires, and weather patterns during early winter months.
What does the stubble-burning status report say?
The stubble-burning status report 2025 by the International Forum for Environment, Sustainability and Technology (iFOREST) released on Monday stated this led to a major underestimation of the contribution of stubble burning to Delhi’s air pollution this year. The report has acknowledged that “burnt areas” in Punjab and Haryana have fallen by 25-35% over recent years. According to the report, in Punjab, the burnt area reduced by 15% from 23,262 sq km last year to 19,757 sq km in the current season, even as a sharer 53% decline was reported in the cases of farm fire events — from 10,909 last year to 5,114 this season.
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Similarly while CREAMS data stated sharp drop in stubble burning events in Haryana — from 1,406 last year to 662 this year — data from from satellite shows that the burnt area in the state area has actually risen from 7,117 sq km in 2024 to 8,812 sq km in 2025.As per the CREAMS stubble burning events in the period between September 15 and November 30 this year, declined significantly to 33,028 events across northern states – Punjab, Haryana, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Uttar Pradesh, compared to 78,850 events since 2021.
Punjab government officials attribute this trend to multiple factors, including the widespread adoption of over 1,50,000 crop residue management machines, enhanced residue management techniques, government initiatives promoting alternative farming practices, and growing farmer awareness regarding the environmental impact of stubble burning.
Environment Minister’s statement
Environment Minister Bhupender Yadav recently stated in Parliament that there was a 90% reduction in fire incidents in Punjab and Haryana in 2025 compared to 2022.
Initiated in 2018, a CII foundation which has been supporting over 1000 villages in Punjab and Haryana covering about 1.13 million hectare of area in crop residue management through in-situ straw management through creation of straw banks, setting up biogas units, compost plant. In over 500 villages CII has been supporting , incidents of burning has been substantially reduced and over 70% to 80% of farmland in its intervention areas have reported zero burning.
Power generating companies too are stepping in with decentralised biomass plants converting crop residue after harvesting of paddy into electricity easing pollution in the capital.
State authorities have been promoting crop-residue management in a more structured way, and national regulatory bodies such as Commission for Air Quality Management (CAQM) have strengthened monitoring and enforcement mechanisms to reduce seasonal spikes in pollution. These steps, combined with greater awareness at the community level, are gradually improving the ecosystem needed to tackle stubble burning, industry says.
“Our contribution has been through biomass-based waste-to-energy power plants in Abohar and Muktsar, which convert agricultural residue into electricity supplied to the local grid. These plants help avoid open-field burning while creating a viable market for paddy straw, cotton stalks, wheat stalks and mustard straw.,” K.L. Bansal, Chairman & Managing Director, DEE Development Engineers, told FE.
Stating that these initiatives have enabled a reduction of over hundreds of thousands tons of CO₂ emissions into the atmosphere, Bansal believes that expanding decentralised biomass-to-energy solutions, alongside broader clean-energy adoption, can meaningfully support the region’s long-term air-quality improvement efforts.
Prashant Mathur, CEO, Saatvik Green Energy noted that sincere efforts are made across transportation, energy and agriculture. Electric mobility is gradually expanding and renewable power is becoming a larger part of the national grid, while crop residue management has seen stronger adoption this year in northern states.
“Yet, improving air quality is not like flipping a switch. Even when individual sectors make progress, the gains tend to be slow and uneven because pollution in the region has multiple drivers that compound each other. The encouraging part is that the direction of change is finally right, cleaner fuels, greener transport and improved farm practices are no longer on the periphery,” Mathur said. |
