PATIALA: Punjab saw a spurt in cases of stubble burning on Sunday after the state chief minister Amarinder Singh reiterated that farmers would not be penalized for burning paddy stubble.Till October 14, Punjab had witnessed 1,491 cases of firing of crop residue. However, after the CM's statement, the Punjab Pollution Control Board (PPCB) registered as many as 547 cases of stubble burning on Sunday, taking the total number of instances to 2,038 across the state. The PPCB officials said the data for Monday was still being compiled, but inputs from the field staff indicate that the number could be much higher than that on the previous day .Even farmers who were exploring alternative methods to dispose of the crop residue were reported to be disinclined to do so once the threat of being penalized faded away.Amarinder had said that though his government was committed to implementing the NGT ban on stubble burning, he could not afford to compensate the farmers for paddy residue management. He had also ruled out penalizing of farmers, saying they were already under extreme economic distress. PPCB chairman K S Pannu said as a nodal agency for collection of data related to stubble burning, the board was collecting all information using satellite imagery and the statistics provided by the Punjab Remote Sensing Centre (PRSC), Ludhiana. He said all such inputs were promptly shared with the district monitoring committees for further action.“The statement by the CM has come as a reprieve for farmers who know they do not have to pay any fine for burning crop stubble now,“ said Mahinderpal Singh, a farmer from Kalyana village in Patiala district. He said even those who exploring ways to manage the paddy straw by using other methods were now thinking of setting the paddy residue in their fields on fire.Vicky Singh, an assistant professor at Krishi Vigyan Kendra, Ferozepur, said the government had built pressure on the farmers and they had started approaching them to learn about other means to manage paddy straw. He said a large number of farmers from Mamdot village in Ferozepur district had approached KVK for help. “We had fixed Monday to hold a demonstration in the village about machines used in management of crop stubble.But when I rang up the villagers on Monday morning, they plainly refused to attend any demonstration and asked us not to come,“ he said.Meanwhile, the PPCB data shows that till Sunday , environmental compensation charge of Rs 8.42 lakh was imposed on 295 farmers, out of the total 2,038 registered cases.