India’s official systems for tracking stubble burning fail to detect the extent of crop residue being set on fire in Punjab and Haryana, according to a new study by the non-profit organisation International Forum for Environment, Sustainability and Technology released on Monday.

The burning of crop residue is among the contributors to air pollution in Delhi, which is often ranked the world’s most polluted capital city.

The Union government has claimed that there has been a sharp fall in stubble-burning cases in 2025, as compared to previous years.

On December 1, the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change told Parliament that between September 15 and November 30, Punjab recorded 5,114 farm-fire incidents and Haryana recorded 662, a drop of roughly 90% compared with 2022.

However, according to the report by the environmental research organisation released on Monday, the official figures are misleading because the government relies on active fire counts. Through this, only those fires that a satellite can see at the moment it passes overhead are recorded.

India’s national farm-fire monitoring system uses data from the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer on the Terra and Aqua satellites and the Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite on the Suomi-National Polar-orbiting Partnership satellite.

These are polar-orbiting satellites, which observe the landscape only at fixed times...

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