Air pollution: UP chief secretary faces SC ire

The Chief Secretary of Uttar Pradesh, Rajendra Kumar Tiwari on Wednesday faced criticism from Supreme Court for failing to come up with an appropriate road map to prevent stubble burning. The bench also came down heavily on the Punjab Chief secretary for his failure to prevent stubble burning.

New Delhi: Uttar Pradesh Chief Secretary Rajendra Kumar Tiwari faced flak from the Supreme Court on Wednesday for failing to come up with an appropriate road map to prevent stubble burning, which is a major source of air pollution in Delhi-NCR.

Tiwari, who was summoned by the apex court, started his submissions before a bench of justices Arun Mishra and Deepak Gupta by telling his name to the court.

"We do not want to know your name. We do not want any lectures. What is the road map?," the bench asked the 1985-batch Indian Administrative Service (IAS), officer.

When Tiwari said Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath was himself reviewing the situation as regards stubble burning, the anguished bench said, "CM or PM, we are not interested in names. We are interested in actual work only."

The bench also came down heavily on the Punjab Chief secretary for his failure to prevent stubble burning and said if he could not give a satisfactory response to the court's query, he would have to vacate the chair.

Asserting that agriculture was the backbone of the economy and farmers needed support from the government, the top court directed Punjab, Haryana and Uttar Pradesh to provide support of Rs 100 per quintal to those small and marginal farmers, who had not burnt stubble, within seven days.