Delhi govt is taking measures to fight pollution, BJP is playing blame game : Gopal Rai

New Delhi:Delhi Environment Minister Shri Gopal Rai on Wednesday slammed the BJP and said that whereas on one hand the Delhi government is taking measures to fight pollution, the BJP leaders on the other hand are constantly telling lies to the people to malign the image of the Delhi government. He said that no BJP leader is seen participating in any campaign, they are just seen playing blame game and doing politics. 

He said that the bio-decomposer solution was sprayed on 2000 acres of land across Delhi after the farmers filled the forms. The Delhi government has the record of the forms filled for spraying the solution on the fields, as an evidence against the charges of the BJP leaders who said that the Delhi government is lying and no solution has been used on the farmlands in Delhi. Based on the results of the solution on the fields, the Delhi government has filed a petition in front of the Air Quality Commission yesterday, said Gopal Rai.

Addressing a press conference today, Shri Gopal Rai said, "Under the leadership of Hon'ble CM Shri Arvind Kejriwal, the people of Delhi have waged a war against pollution. The Delhi government introduced 'Red Light On Gaadi Off' campaign to curb vehicle pollution, anti-dust campaign to combat dust pollution, we have deployed teams and are taking action on biomass burning across Delhi. 

We have introduced the bio decomposer technique in association with IARI, Pusa, to combat pollution due to stubble burning in Delhi. Whereas on one hand the Delhi government is taking measures to fight pollution, the BJP leaders on the other hand, despite living in Delhi, are constantly telling lies to the people to malign the image of our government."

"BJP leader Vijay Gupta took on the streets to protest against the 'Red Light On Gaadi Off' campaign, but no BJP leader is seen participating in any campaign. They are not doing anything to control dust or biomass burning. Today the garbage mountain is burning, but they are busy playing blame games. The people of Delhi are choking since the last 2 months due to stubble burning in the neighbouring states of Delhi. The farmers do not have any solution to stubble burning. The experiment of the Delhi government in association with the Pusa institute which has developed a capsule that turns stubble on the fields into manure, has been successful," said Shri Rai.

Shri Gopal Rai said, "The BJP did a press conference and said that they took a round across Delhi and that the bio-decomposer solution has not been sprayed on any farmland. They assessed this in just a day's visit, whereas it took the Delhi government 20 days to spray this solution across all the farmlands in Delhi. The BJP said that the Pusa institute has told them that the Delhi government has bought no such capsule from the institute. What can be a bigger lie than this? You are an opposition party and it is okay to criticize but there is a limit to spreading lies." 

Shri Gopal Rai said that there are 15,000 acres of paddy fields in Delhi, out of which non-basmati rice is grown on 2000 acres of land. The rest of the fields, where the basmati rice is grown, go through manual harvesting and not mechanised harvesting, due to which there is no stubble on the fields. The 2000 acres of non-basmati rice go through mechanised harvesting and stubble is left behind, which is then burned and generates pollution. He said, "On September 11th the Pusa institute gave a presentation on a capsule being developed to turn stumble into manure and on 16 September I visited Pusa institute to understand the process.

On September 23rd a presentation was shown to the Chief Minister by the directors and the scientists of the Pusa Institute. On September 24th the CM visited the Pusa institute and so the ground presentation of the process, after which the Delhi government decided to spray the bio-decomposer solution on 2000 acres of non-basmati rice fields. We decided to prepare the solution through a centralised technique, which would be provided to the farmers free of cost." 

"On October 3rd, the Delhi government ordered 2000 packets of the bio-decomposing solution. In 400 utensils, we used 25 litres of water, 5 pouches (4 capsules in one pouch) in one utensil, 750 gms jaggery and 250 gms of chickpea flour to prepare the solution, which was then stored. On October 5th, 10000 litres of the solution was prepared. The solution was again prepared from 750 gms of jaggery and water to prepare 20000 litres of the solution to spray in 2000 acres of land. The solution was first sprayed on the farmlands in Hiranki village, Narela, on October 13th by the Hon'ble CM.

After that, the solution was sprayed on 2000 acres of land across Delhi by the officials, after the farmers filled the forms. The Delhi government has the record of the forms filled for spraying the solution on the fields. Every form from every village has been collected and kept in our records, a centre was established in Kharkhari Nahar Village to prepare the solution under the guidance of the scientists or the Pusa Institute since it was a new thing for us too. We have visited and witnessed first hand the results of the bio-decomposer technique on the fields, when I, along with the Hon'ble CM, visited the Hiranki village on November 4th.

The Delhi government constituted a 15-member panel, comprising 5 ICAR officials, 5 MLAs, and 5 IARI scientists, who visited 25 villages across Delhi and collected samples, based on which we have filed a petition in front of the Air Quality Commission yesterday. The list of the farmers who agreed to spraying the solution on their fields, the quantity of the capsules purchased, and the information on the entire process is with the Delhi government. We only demand that the farmers in the neighbouring states of Delhi who are forced to burn stubble should be able to avail the benefits of the bio-decomposer technique, so that the people of Delhi get rid of smoke and pollution due to stubble burning," said Shri Rai.

"The solution was prepared by the Pusa institute many years ago. What should have been done by the central government, the BJP govt in Uttar Pradesh, Haryana, and Congress govt in Punjab, is being done by the Delhi government. The Delhi govt has done it to save the lives of the people. I want to tell the BJP government to take some action since they are not doing anything for the last 2 months.

If they had taken some action before people would not have been dying during this covid pandemic due to pollution. Please don't play politics on the lives of the people. We have submitted all the reports in front of the commission and I hope that it will take action on the matter and other states will be able to adopt this cost-effective measure to prevent stubble burning," he added.