Nearly 7,000 FIRs were filed between 2022 and 2024 against farmers burning paddy stubble in Punjab, but according to police records and senior officials in several hotspot districts, no action has been taken so far in most cases resulting in charge sheets being filed, nominal fines being imposed or quietly closed under pressure from farmer unions.
In 2024, Punjab registered 5,783 FIRs for farm fires, while 1,144 were registered in 2023 and 44 in 2022. This year, till November 4, 972 FIRs have been registered. The police cases are part of a crackdown on the practice, which is known to shroud much of northern India in toxic smoke during late October and much of November, sending air pollution levels to health emergency levels for millions of people in these states.
According to police records, prosecution department data and district administration officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity, most of the FIRs have had no follow-up action and are pending in police stations or have been settled with minimal penalties.
Punjab government officials, including Punjab Police’s nodal officer for the farm fire and special DGP Arpit Shukla, did not respond to requests for comment.
For example, in agricultural fire hotspot districts including Patiala, Sangrur, Muktsar, Moga and Faridkot, not a single FIR has reached the stage of challan or chargesheet in court in the three-year period till November 1, 2025, according to prosecution department data. These districts recorded 1,875 cases in the last three years.
In Amritsar, Tarn Taran, Bathinda and Firozpur – other major districts with the problem of stubble burning – combined, less than 100 cases have reached the courts in the last three years, a senior prosecution wing officer told HT on condition of anonymity. Nearly 3,000 FIRs were filed in these districts in 2022, 2023 and 2024.
Certainly, the number of police cases itself represents a very small proportion of the actual number of fire incidents. According to data from NASA’s Fire Information for Resource Management System (FIRMS), over three years – 2022, 2023 and 2024 – 46,752, 31,325 and 9,099 farm fires were observed from satellites.
Over at least a decade, these fires have created a serious health emergency for states and territories. Every year, smoke from these areas spreads across the Indo-Gangetic plains, appearing as thick white bands in satellite photos and numerically correlating with increased PM2.5 levels.
“Most of the cases are pending. Many were settled with nominal fines.” from 500 1,000. Many FIRs were withdrawn due to pressure from farmer unions,” said a senior police officer from Patiala district.
Starting from 2024, all FIRs on farm fires are registered under Section 223 of the Indian Justice Code, a section that provides for punishment for “disobedience to public orders issued by authorities” – in this case, district magistrate orders against burning crop residue. The maximum punishment is imprisonment for six months or a fine 5,000, or both.
Before 2024, cases were registered under a section equivalent to Section 188 of the Indian Penal Code, which had mostly similar provisions except for a nominal maximum penalty. 1,000.
The HT is not considering cases registered in the current year due to the general delay in cases proceeding to the prosecution stage.
A pattern of dropped cases
A Deputy Inspector General (DIG) rank officer, speaking on condition of anonymity, said investigation has been closed in several cases where farmers have claimed that the fire spread from neighboring fields.
A second police officer agreed, saying there were “many factors”.
A SHO level officer from Jalandhar district said, “There is a common practice in Punjab of informal land contracts (thekas) without any written agreement. Many cases were closed because FIRs were lodged against the land owners on record, while the actual cultivators were different people living elsewhere.”
According to legal experts, the second reason that Section 223 is inadequate for environmental violations is that it does not directly address harm caused by pollution.
Himanshu Malik, a lawyer practicing in the Punjab and Haryana High Court, said, “Section 223 is a very mild section and even if a person is arrested in these cases, bail can be taken immediately at the SHO level.”
Punjab Director of Prosecutions Sukhpal Gill, however, denied that there was a trend of inadequate prosecution. “The farm fire cases have reached the courts. I cannot comment precisely on the numbers as our district offices deal with such local cases,” he said.
Gill did not give details of how many cases reached the charge sheet level in three years.
political hot potato
Officials and experts said the real hurdle is political sensitivity.
“Farmers are a politically sensitive section and have strong vote pockets. No government can harass them. My experience is that the administration, including people from agricultural background, understands the compulsion of farmers to burn straw, but when the court directs them to take action, they use light streams so that they have something to show on paper. Even the authorities understand that FIRs against farmers will yield no results,” Kesar Singh, former professor at Punjabi University. Bhangu, who is an expert in agricultural economics, said.
The crackdown gained a significant boost in November 2024, when the Supreme Court intervened – a fact reflected in the FIR numbers: 5,783 FIRs were filed in the year, five times more than the number of cases filed the previous year.
Another expert agreed that political sensitivities were a major obstacle against action. Bathinda-based political commentator Bakhtaur Dhillon said, “The farm protests in 2021 were historic moments for the farming community as farmers forced a powerful leader like Narendra Modi to withdraw the controversial three laws. Now no state government takes the risk of coming into direct conflict with farmers.”
A third senior Punjab Police official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said both the police and the state government are wary of increasingly powerful farm unions and avoid a heavy-handed approach “for fear of protests, road blockades or agitation outside government offices”.
A senior police officer from Muktsar said, “This is the ground reality. It has now become a culture in Punjab that farmer unions become aggressive even on small issues and start harassing the public and the administration by staging sit-ins. The general strategy of the police is to avoid confrontation with farmer unions.”
“FIRs are mainly filed to satisfy the Supreme Court and the central government, but due to ground realities, action is not taken at the local level,” a senior official of the district administration in one of the three hot spot districts told HT, requesting anonymity.
Unions reject blame
Farmer unions objected to blame for pollution. “Various studies have shown that stubble burning by Punjab farmers is not the primary cause of Delhi’s pollution. Why are the Center and courts hell-bent on portraying Punjab farmers as enemies of humanity?” Manjit Singh Dhaner, senior vice president of Bharatiya Kisan Union Ekta-Dakaunda asked.
Adarsh Pal Vig, former chairman of the Punjab Pollution Control Board (PPCB), said that FIRs are the last resort used against farmers and advocated a more pragmatic approach of giving farmers options rather than threatening them with law – he claimed that this approach had shown better results.
Wig said, “We need to understand that no democratic structure will take the risk of filing cases against farmers anywhere in India, and farmers in Punjab have almost given up the habit of stubble burning. The fire cases have come down from about 81,000 in 2022 to 10,000 this year. This is not because of FIRs, but because it took time for the government to provide alternatives to farmers.”
There have been 3,384 incidents of field fires this year during the paddy harvesting season.
However, district officials said another punitive measure could also lead to greater deterrence: red entries in land revenue records.
The red entry is an official marking in the Jamabandi (land ownership record). Although this is not an immediate punishment, it blocks access to government subsidies and schemes and creates barriers to bank loans.
District officials say farmers react more strongly to red entries because these affect credit access and land ownership reputation, unlike FIRs, which “don’t pinch”.
“In case of FIRs, farmers know that the police will not take action against them because of political pressure. In case of red entries, they know that this may hamper their subsidies and stop them from getting loans on their land.”
Till November 4 this year, there have been 1,222 raid entries in Punjab.
The government has also imposed environmental compensation amount Out of which Rs 66.90 lakh Rs 32.60 lakh has been recovered.
Meanwhile, the United Kisan Morcha has announced a symbolic demonstration in Chandigarh on November 19 against the filing of cases against farmers for burning stubble.
