The Civil Supplies Department of Telangana Government has procured 42 lakh tonnes of paddy from the kharif harvest so far. The aggregate value of the produce is put at about ₹8,200 crore.
The Food Corporation of India (FCI) has agreed to procure 60 lakh tonnes of paddy (or 40 lakh tonnes of rice) from Telangana from the Kharif season.
While the State Government claims that the procurement level is higher than that of last year’s level, the Opposition parties and farmers’ unions have alleged that the pace of procurement is very slow.
“The procurement of 42 lakh tonnes is 30 per cent more than what we procured by now last year,” a senior Civil Supplies Ministry official said.
He said the State opened 6,775 procurement centres and has disbursed ₹5,550 crore so far.
The State expects a total production of 1.6 crore tonnes of paddy this year as the farmers grew the staple food crop in 61 lakh acres.
The Centre, however, disputed this figure and conducted a survey using satellite images and asserted that the area under paddy was 58 lakh acres.
In an open letter to the farmers recently, State’s Agriculture Minister S Niranjan Reddy said that the area under paddy had gone up significantly ever since the State was formed in 2014.
“The total area under paddy in the two seasons (kharif and rabi) was only 35 lakh acres. This has gone up to 104 lakh acres in 2020-21. The output too saw witnessed a phenomenal growth. It went up to three crore tonnes from 68 lakh tonnes during the period,” he said.