Delhi air turns toxic before Diwali amid claims of a ‘deliberate’ stubble-burning push

New Delhi: Delhi-NCR’s AQI started sliding two to three days before Diwali night. Firecrackers were not in the sky yet. What changed was upwind smoke.

An ICAR-IARI bulletin for 19 October 2025 logs 153 paddy-residue fires across six states. Punjab alone had 67, the day’s highest share. Haryana had 7, Uttar Pradesh 12, Rajasthan 24, Madhya Pradesh 43. Delhi had zero. 

Through 15 September-19 October, the count hits 1,244 events: Punjab 308, Haryana 38, UP 480, Rajasthan 174, MP 241, Delhi 3. That is a live-season load before any festival-night fireworks. 

The spike that matters, not the slogan

Punjab’s daily curve is the giveaway. After low, early-season numbers, detections accelerate in mid-October and jump into the Oct 16-19 window, exactly when Delhi’s AQI turns. 

Delhi’s own farm-fire detections stay negligible, so this is a transport story, not a local-burning one. 

Drill down further, and the Oct 19 map shows clusters in Amritsar and Tarn Taran blocks (Ajnala, Chogawan, Jandiala Guru; Tarn Taran/Valtoha). Fire-radiative-power (FRP) on single pixels touches 20.3 W/m², signalling fresh, active ignition, this is not legacy haze. 

Year-on-year charts won’t save you

This is where the debate gets muddy. Big claims of “improvement” lean on year-on-year totals. But counts swing with satellite passes, cloud cover, thresholds and reporting protocols. 

ICAR–IARI itself flags a Standard Protocol and uses multiple sensors (VIIRS, MODIS). Method choices move the headline number. The day-by-day curve is the honest baseline for a pre-Diwali spike. 

This year’s calendar exposes the timing game

Diwali is earlier. Delhi’s worst trapping usually builds in the first week of November. Weather is not at peak inversion yet. If AQI is already sliding in late October, fresh biomass smoke is the obvious driver. The stubble curve shows when and where it lit up. 

The narrative everyone hears, the data everyone can check

Every season, the festival becomes the headline villain. Meanwhile, the pre-festival burn picks up, sets the base layer, and then gets folded into the Diwali blame. 

This year, that sequence is starker because the festival is early and the weather is less hostile. If air holds lower than some past Novembers, it will be because meteorology is kinder, not because farm fires vanished.

Online chatter also ties the spike to the court debate on firecrackers. The claim: a big stubble surge makes any relaxation look reckless. There is no official proof of coordination, but the timelines do collide, a visible upswing in Punjab as Delhi’s AQI turns before the festival night. 

If the question is “why did the air turn before Diwali,” the satellite log has a straight answer: Punjab’s daily spike lit the fuse.