<span style="color: #222222;">Haryana Chief Minister, Manohar Lal has directed the concerned officers to encourage the farmers not to burn crop residue and also apprise them of different options for the management of crop residue.<br />''<br />''</span>Mr Manohar Lal was presiding over a meeting to review the Crop Residue Management (CRM) scheme at Chandigarh on Friday. It was informed in the meeting that 34 per cent reduction has been registered in residue burning area in the state upto October 22 this year as compared to the corresponding period of the previous year. <br />''<br />''Last year, crop residue burning was reported on 57,000 hectares of land as compared to only about 38,000 hectares this time till now. It is also mentioned that there is reduction of 6.5 per cent incidents as compared to last year as on date.<br />''<br />''It was also informed that besides awareness activities till now, the process of setting up of 1248 Custom Hiring Centres has been completed which is 90 per cent of the total number of such centers to be established. <br />''<br />''<span style="color: #222222;">The Chief Minister directed officers of Agriculture and Farmers' Welfare Department to visit top 10 villages of the State where maximum crop residue burning has been reported so as to ascertain the reason behind this activity. He said that a cash award of 1000 rupees would be given to those who would give information about the burning of crop residue in their area and the identity of the person giving the information would also be kept secret. </span><br />