Even as a thick blanket of smog engulfed several parts of Delhi and Uttar Pradesh on Sunday, a Bharatiya Janata Party leader suggested a bizarre way to tackle the pollution — yajnas.
The leader believes that pleasing Lord Indra would help reduce the pollution in the national capital region.
BJP leader Sunil Bharala, who is chairman of the State Labour Welfare Board and has the rank of cabinet minister, said that criticism of stubble burning was not right.
He said the governments should instead perform yajnas to please Lord Indra, the God of rain, who would set things right.
Sunil Bharala’s comments come at a time when Delhi is under grip of one of the worst air quality with the AQI in most places breaching the 399 mark.
Bharala said stubble burning was a natural process and it did not cause pollution of such high level. “Farmers have always burned stubble and the items burnt are waste material... it is a natural process. Repeated criticism of it is unfortunate,” he said.
The BJP leader said in order to reduce pollution, governments should perform yajnas to please Lord Indra as traditionally done and Lord Indra would set things right.
Stubble burning is considered to be one of the major reasons for pollution. Over 22,000 cases of stubble burning have been witnessed in Punjab and more than 4,200 in Haryana in the recent days, officials disclosed.
Bharala said, “When farmers cultivate sugarcane or dal, such wastes are bound to generate and they have to burn it.”
Sunil Bharala, a Brahmin leader from west UP, was appointed as the chairman of the labour welfare board with the rank of cabinet minister ahead of the 2019 Lok Sabha poll.
In UP, Ghaziabad had the worst average AQI of 453, followed by Bulandshahr (446), Hapur (444), Greater Noida (438), Baghpat (435), Noida (432), Lucknow (422), Kanpur (379), Meerut (371) and Varanasi (328), the Central Pollution Control Board’s (CPCB) Saturday data showed.