With the paddy harvest yet to begin, the Agriculture and Farmers Welfare Department has stepped up preparations for stubble management, aiming to bring farm-fire incidents down to zero this season. The department is promoting alternatives to burning paddy residue through both in-situ and ex-situ management measures.
According to official data, paddy has been cultivated on around 4.5 lakh acres in the district this year, and nearly 9 lakh metric tonnes (MT) of crop residue is expected to be generated after harvesting.
Of the estimated residue, around 1 lakh MT is expected to be used as cattle fodder and by packaging factories, while nearly 1.5 lakh MT will be supplied by farmers to the Indian Oil Corporation Limited (IOCL) 2G ethanol plant in Panipat. The remaining residue will be managed through various in-situ and ex-situ methods.
Officials said IOCL had set up seven collection centres for straw procurement. In addition, around 70 collection centres have been established by individual farmers or farmer groups in different villages to collect straw under the ex-situ management process.
Around 750 employees and officials from various departments have been deployed to monitor stubble-burning incidents and encourage farmers to adopt alternative residue-management practices, said Dr Anand Kumar Sharma, Deputy Commissioner (DC).
“We have constituted village-level, block-level, sub-division-level and district-level committees led by the concerned SDMs, tehsildars, BDPOs, agricultural officers, horticulture officers and officials of the Animal Husbandry and Pollution Control departments. These teams have been tasked with keeping vigil on farm-fire incidents, reporting them and taking action against violators. Police personnel will also be part of the teams for strict enforcement of the law,” said Dr Sharma.
Dr Jasvinder Singh, Deputy Director Agriculture (DDA), said arrangements had been made to ensure that IOCL received the required quantity of paddy straw. Collection centres have been established at various locations, and farmers in the respective areas informed about the facilities. He said the government would provide Rs 1,200 per acre to farmers for adopting stubble-management practices instead of burning the residue.
The DDA said around 55,000 farmers had been registered as paddy growers in the district. He added that the district had sufficient machinery for stubble management, including super straw management systems, happy seeders, shrub masters/rotary slashers, hydraulic reversible MB ploughs, zero-till seed drills, super seeders, balers, straw rakes, crop reapers and paddy-straw choppers.
The department has also continued measures adopted in previous years, which, he said, have contributed to a decline in stubble-burning incidents across the district.
The district recorded 23 farm-fire cases during the paddy season in 2025, compared with 95 cases in 2024, 126 in 2023, 301 in 2022, 957 in 2021 and 1,052 in 2020.
“This year we have kept a target to bring it to zero cases, for which we are making efforts,” he added.
