Telangana achieves record paddy procurement of 1.47 crore tonnes in 2025-26

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Telangana has procured a record quantity of 147 lakh tonnes of paddy in the 2025-26 agriculture (procurement) year, which is equivalent to 61% of the paddy procured in the country, despite the Centre reducing the lifting of custom milled rice after processing of the paddy procured at minimum support price based on the fair average quality norms, Civil Supplies and Irrigation Minister N. Uttam Kumar Reddy announced.

The achievement was possible even after the State’s repeated requests to the Centre, Ministry of Food and Public Distribution, to enhance the procurement quantity, fell on deaf ears, Mr. Uttam Kumar Reddy said addressing a press conference here on Tuesday. Stating that Telangana had procured 75 lakh tonnes of paddy this Rabi season so far and another 1-2 lakh tonnes more was expected over the next few days.

Hitting out at the Opposition Bharat Rashtra Samithi (BRS) and Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) for spreading lies about paddy procurement and misleading farmers, he said that both the parties did nothing to help farmers but had only created hurdles in procurement.

He noted that the procurement of paddy was just in this year’s vicinity in 2020-21, the COVID affected year when purchase of paddy by traders and millers was not possible even to a small extent and the entire procurement was by the Civil Supplies Department, when it was a little over 141 lakh tonnes (1.41 crore tonnes) and this year (2025-26) it was 147 lakh tonnes so far, out of a total estimated production of 295 lakh tonnes.

The Minister said a total of ₹35,077 crore amount was credited to the 25.2 lakh farmers’ bank accounts in KMS 2025-26 in lieu of paddy purchased from them and as the Centre had put limit on procurement for CMR the State Government had to spared ₹6,650 crore from the budget for paddy procurement and borrowed another ₹16,649 crore from banks for the purpose.

For the Rabi season, the government had disbursed ₹17,917 crore for the procurement of 75 lakh tonnes of paddy, including 12,5