By Vivek Gupta

Chandigarh: As air quality again dipped to the ‘severe’ category in the national capital, AAP national convener and Delhi chief minister Arvind Kejriwal came forward on Friday and took the responsibility of stubble burning in Punjab.

Till very recently, Kejriwal was locking horns with the centre after stubble burning went out of control in the state that his party has been ruling since March this year, registering 19% growth over the last year.

As the number of cases increased to 24,000 in Punjab on Thursday and the subsequent drop in air quality in Delhi and other cities, Kejriwal changed tunes.

He not only accepted his government’s failure to stop stubble fires in Punjab but also promised not to indulge in blame games and find a solution by next year.

He also asked the centre to take more initiative since pollution, he said, is a north India problem now, not confined to Delhi alone.

“We have the government in Punjab. We take responsibility if stubble is being burnt there,” said Kejriwal in a joint press conference with Punjab Chief Minister Bhagwant Mann.

Saying that they were in the government in Punjab only for the last six months, he said some solutions worked but a lot of others did not.

Mann too said that the month he took oath in March, the wheat crop was ready to harvest. Then immediately thereafter there was a paddy crop.

Kejriwal added, “I am quite hopeful that stubble-burning cases in Punjab will come down by next year. We will take strong steps and also engage with farmers to find feasible solutions.”

He said that air pollution is not only Delhi’s problem. “Several cities of Haryana, Rajasthan and UP were equally suffering,” he said while reading the names of cities having air quality in a severe category like Delhi during his press statement.

It included Haryana’s Rohtak, Bhiwani, Charkhi Dadri, Sonepat, Bahadurgarh, Jind, Manesar, Gurgaon, UP’s Noida, Greater Noida, Ghaziabad, and Bhiwadi in Rajasthan.

Kejriwal said it shows that this is a problem for the entire northern region. There is no one particular reason for this.

Read more https://www.newsdrum.in/analysis/arvind-kejriwal-seeks-a-year-more-but-will-he-su