Hyderabad: Minister forCivil Supplies N Uttam Kumar Reddy has appealed to the Centre to extend its cooperation to ensure the smooth procurement of paddy during the ongoing Kharif Marketing Season (KMS). In this regard, Uttam Kumar Reddy addressed a letter to Union Minister for Consumer Affairs, Food and Public Distribution and Minister for New and Renewable Energy Prahlad Joshi on Sunday.

In his letter, Uttam Kumar Reddy urged the Centre to enhance the procurement target to protect farmers from distress sales. He requested that the paddy procurement target for Kharif 2025–26 be increased to 80 lakh metric tonnes (LMT), equivalent to 54 LMT of rice.

The Minister also sought urgent intervention to ensure uninterrupted procurement operations during the ongoing Kharif Marketing Season (KMS) 2025–26. He noted that these issues were discussed during a meeting held with the Union Minister on November 20, 2025, and outlined the specific concerns in his letter. With regard to the additional allocation of boiled rice for KMS 2024–25 (Rabi crop), Uttam Kumar Reddy stated that the Government of India had allocated 35 LMT of rice. Of this, the Food Corporation of India (FCI) has so far received 17.83 LMT of parboiled rice and 1.13 LMT of raw rice under Custom Milled Rice (CMR). This leaves a balance of 1.56 LMT of parboiled rice and 14.01 LMT of raw rice yet to be delivered. He further appealed to the Union Minister to enhance the paddy procurement target for Kharif 2025–26. The Government of India has fixed the procurement target at 36 LMT of rice (54 LMT of paddy), which he said is inadequate given that paddy production is estimated at 148 LMT, with expected procurement of around 80 LMT (54 LMT of rice).