PATIALA: With the Delhi government again pointing fingers at its neighbouring states for the smog that has returned to engulf the Capital, Punjab refused to take the blame on Monday citing zero stubble burning with lush green wheat fields replacing paddy straw across the state.

The NGT had on Monday came down heavily on the Delhi government for not filing a comprehensive action plan on ways to deal with severe air pollution in the city and also slammed the authorities for holding the India-Sri Lanka Test match despite poor air quality. The AAP government, on the other hand, tried to pass the buck to Punjab and Haryana.

However, the Punjab Pollution Control Board (PPCB) maintains that not even a single straw of paddy has been burnt in the state over the last fifteen days and over 85% of the paddy fields have now been replaced with the wheat crops.

Chairman of the PPCB KS Pannu said there was no alarming situation in Punjab and the fields were lush green with new wheat crop. He said the Air Quality Index (AQI) has also improved over the past few days with the monitoring stations at Amritsar, Ludhiana and Mandi Gobindgarh showing readings of 240, 283 and 286 micrograms/m3, respectively, as on Monday.

Till a few days back, when paddy residue was being put on fires across the state, the AQI monitors were reflecting readings of 320 micrograms/m3 at Amritsar, 332 micrograms/m3 at Ludhiana and 371 micrograms/m3 at Mandi Gobindgarh.

Pannu said that there has been a considerable fall in the pollution levels across the state suggesting that stubble burning contributed around 100 micrograms/m3 pollutants to the air. However, as the state's air quality is still in the bracket of 'poor', Pannu attributed the situation to the phenomena of 'winter inversion', in which suspended particulate matter gets concentrated in the lower strata of the atmosphere.

The PPCB chairman said the dispersion of pollutants was at an all-time low and thus the state's air quality was yet to improve further as factors like industrial and vehicular pollution continue to add pollutants to the atmosphere.

"However, blaming Punjab for smog in Delhi now was totally out of context," he said.

Notably, the union minister for environment minister Anil Madhav Dave has also negated the perception that stubble burnt in Punjab and Haryana was causing smog in the national capital. After meeting representatives of the neighbouring states, last month, the minister had stated that about 80% of Delhi's pollution was due to reasons that were restricted within its own territorial limits.

Meanwhile, on Monday, the AQI readings for 16 monitoring stations installed in Delhi showed an average reading of 468.7 micrograms/m3. These stations reflected that the air quality across the national capital was in the 'serve' category forcing the Delhi government to dig out the reasons for increased pollution in the air.