Satellite Monitoring Fails to Detect 90% of Farm Fires in Punjab and Haryana: iFOREST Report Reveals

Dec 09, 2025 02:18 am CST

A new report by iFOREST reveals that over 90% of large farm fires in Punjab and Haryana go undetected by official monitoring systems due to farmers shifting stubble-burning to late afternoons. Despite this monitoring gap, burnt areas have decreased by 25-35% in recent years, though approximately 30,000 sq km of paddy fields were still burnt in 2025, significantly impacting air quality in Delhi-NCR and the Indo-Gangetic region.