India Today ·
The fires we stopped counting
This is the third in a three-part story. The institute that counts India's stubble fires added a line to its bulletins this year: satellites do not record fires lit when nothing is overhead. September 15 was the first time it appeared in a paddy season, the season that produced the 93 per cent fall everyone quotes.
The satellite's eye opened at 13:59:35 on September 15, and in that second it saw three fires.
Two were in Tarn Taran, in Punjab's paddy belt, 161 metres apart. Whether that was two fields alight or one fire seen twice, the record cannot say. The third was 672 kilometres east, in Kannauj, Uttar Pradesh. Overnight it caught two more, in Ghaziabad and Sonbhadra.
