Plea filed in NGT against early sowing of paddy
A petition has been filed with the National Green Tribunal (NGT) seeking directions against the state government’s decision to advance paddy transplantation date from June 15 to June 1.
The petition, filed by social activist and senior advocate Hari Chand Arora, is likely to be heard in the coming days. The plea also mentions about the declining water table and increasing power consumption to run tubewells.
The petition mentions that the Groundwater Management Circle, Water Resources Department, Punjab, SAS Nagar, has published a report titled “Groundwater Resources of Punjab” showing that the number of the overexploited blocks in the state has increased from 110 to 114 from 2009 to 2022.
“The number of critical blocks has also increased from three to four during the aforesaid period, while the number of semi-critical blocks has gone up from two to 15… The number of safe blocks has gone down from 23 to 17,” it states.
The petition by Arora comes in the wake of a recent Punjab Government decision to advance paddy sowing despite the latest report on groundwater situation in the state revealing a decline in all districts of the state. The petition is likely to come up for hearing this week.
Criticism by experts
The advancing of the date has already drawn criticism from various quarters, especially agriculture experts, who flagged fears of rapid desertification of the state if the groundwater exploitation continues at the present rate.
Experts have advocated pushing paddy transplantation beyond June 20 as the crop needs a huge amount of water throughout the irrigation period that lasts till September-end.
According to official data, every tubewell extracts 30.24 lakh litres of groundwater per week with average eight-hour power supply. This means the 14 lakh tubewells are likely to pump out 4,385 billion litres of groundwater per week. Free electricity to farmers for running tubewells will cost nearly Rs 10,000 crore, the highest subsidy allocation for any sector.
Punjab