Expressing concern over the environmental hazards caused by stubble burning, Punjab chief minister Captain Amarinder Singh on Wednesday wrote to Prime Minister Narendra Modi seeking cost compensation of Rs 100 per quintal of paddy to motivate farmers against the burning of paddy residue in the open fields.

He had raised a similar demand for compensation to farmers with the Prime Minister in September last year too.

Singh stressed that a sum of Rs 100 per quintal of paddy should be given to farmers so that they can arrange to manage the stubble without resorting to its open burning by using the compensation money to meet the paddy straw management cost.

Harvesting of paddy crop had already started in the state and was expected to pick up momentum over the next 10 days. The farmers of Punjab will face the challenge of managing nearly 20 million tonne of paddy straw once again this season, he noted.

The state government had supplied 2,8000 machines to the farmers last year on subsidy ranging from 50 percent to 80 percent, he said. Another 26,000 machines would be supplied to them this year for in situ management of Paddy straw, he added.

However, since the window available to farmers for sowing the next Rabi crop after harvesting of paddy was very small they end up resorting to stubble burning in order to quickly clear their fields to save the cost of managing paddy straw through machines supplied to them, said the chief minister.

The additional cost of using the machines was between Rs 2,500 and Rs 3,000 per acre, which the farmers could not afford, he said.