Overview

• Punjab recorded no new stubble-burning cases for five days through September 30, with 95 incidents so far this season compared with 179 in the same period last year, according to PPCB data.
• NASA’s temporary halt of public FIRMS updates during a U.S. funding lapse disrupted one detection source, while PRSC says it is forwarding ISRO-based inputs to the state pollution board.
• New analysis shows a 70% fall in recorded incidents in 2024 versus 2023 even as total burnt area ticked up, prompting experts to question undercounting and cite burn timing to evade satellite passes.
• A PPCB official said remote-sensing can register multiple ‘incidents’ for a single burnt patch, underscoring why burnt-area mapping may better reflect scale than daily fire counts.
• Punjab has deployed an approximately 8,000-strong Parali Protection Force and is prioritising 663 hotspot villages that produced over 62% of last year’s cases, with calls to anchor CHCs and CRM machinery there.