As part of its preparation to buffer winter pollution in the Delhi national capital region, the Commission for Air Quality Management in NCR and Adjoining Areas (CAQM) said it was in discussion with authorities in Punjab and Haryana to improve measurement of stubble fires.
Mr. Because these were counted through tracking fires via two satellites passing over India during the day and encouraging several farmers, who otherwise face the prospect of fines for being caught setting fire to their fields, to burn stubble in the evenings, this is. Varma’s comments come in the context of mounting evidence since 2024 that the Punjab government’s claims of having reduced farm fires by 90% since 2021 were exaggerated. An ISRO Space Applications Centre study found a gradual shift in peak fire activity from 1.30 p.m. in 2020 to around 5 p.m. in 2024, to avoid detection by polar-orbiting satellites. In 2025, iForest, a research outfit used data from a different satellite to compute another parameter called ‘burnt area,’ — the actual land area affected by fire — and found that the reduction was more gradual, around 30%, falling from about 31,500 sq km in 2022 to 19,700 sq km in 2025.
“While the fire counts reported from satellite passes may not be the most accurate picture of the extent of farm fires, we are in talks with the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) as well as Punjab to have better ‘ground truthing’ protocols,” Rajesh Varma, Chairman, CAQM said at a press briefing on Thursday (September 3, 2026).
