Delhi is choking on ‘missing’ fires: Inside the satellite blind spot hiding Punjab–Haryana stubble burning

A new iFOREST report says 90% of stubble fires now escape satellite tracking as farmers burn after 3 pm, distorting Delhi’s air pollution estimates.

For years, winter pollution in Delhi has followed a familiar script: farm fires spike, air quality collapses, blame ricochets between states, and policy fixes rush in late. But a new scientific analysis now reveals a more uncomfortable truth, India may no longer be seeing most of the fires it is trying to control.

According to the Stubble Burning Status Report 2025 by International Forum for Environment, Sustainability and Technology (iFOREST), more than 90 percent of large farm fires in Punjab now go undetected by official satellite systems. Haryana isn’t far behind. The reason isn’t cheating or data manipulation. It’s timing.

Farmers changed when they burn. India didn’t change when it looks.

The core finding: fires moved to late afternoon, satellites stayed in the morning

India’s official fire-monitoring system is operated by Indian Agricultural Research Institute’s CREAMS programme. It primarily relies on polar-orbiting satellites that pass over India between 10:30 am and 1:30 pm.

That window used to work. It no longer does.

iFOREST’s multi-satellite assessment shows that:

• In Punjab, over 90 percent of large fires in 2024 and 2025 occurred after 3 pm
• In 2021, only 3 percent of large fires happened after 3 pm
• In Haryana, most large fires have shifted to post-3 pm since 2019
• In simple terms: India’s official system is looking in the morning. Farmers are burning in the evening.

The fires are real. The satellites just aren’t there to see them.

Why this matters: Delhi’s pollution forecasts are being built on incomplete data

Fire counts feed directly into:

• Emission estimates
• Pollution source apportionment
• Air-quality forecasts prepared by agencies like Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology

If most fires are missed, then:

• Stubble burning’s role in Delhi-NCR pollution gets systematically underestimated
• Forecast models misjudge pollutant load
• Policy decisions rest on partial inputs

As iFOREST CEO Chandra Bhushan put it bluntly: “We urgently need to overhaul the system. Our current monitoring is structurally misaligned with ground realities.”

The contradiction

Using high-resolution burnt-area mapping from Sentinel-2, the report finds:

Punjab: Burnt area fell from 31,447 sq km (2022) to ~20,000 sq km (2025), a 37 percent decline

Haryana: Fell from 11,633 sq km (2019) to 8,812 sq km (2025), a 25 percent drop

This suggests that in-situ machines, ex-situ biomass use, and enforcement are working.

But here’s the contradiction:

Active fire counts suggest a much steeper fall than what burnt-area data shows. That gap is the satellite blind spot.

So India isn’t seeing less pollution because there are no fires. It’s seeing fewer fires because it’s missing them.

The next risk zone: Uttar Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh

While Punjab and Haryana remain the core focus, iFOREST flags a worrying shift:

• Fire counts are rising in Uttar Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh
• These states already sit inside the Indo-Gangetic pollution belt
• Expansion of burning zones widens the pollution footprint beyond the traditional blame map

What iFOREST is formally asking the government to change

Key recommendations:

• Publish burnt-area data, not just fire counts
• Integrate geostationary satellite inputs into national monitoring
• Revise IITM’s air-quality models to reflect missed afternoon fires
• Expand monitoring beyond Punjab-Haryana to emerging hotspots

As programme lead Ishaan Kochhar warns: “We cannot manage what we do not measure accurately.”

(With inputs from PTI)