More than 27.50 lakh farmers in Chhattisgarh will be able to sell paddy to the government from 15 November 2026 at a rate of ₹3,100 per quintal — a decision taken at a cabinet meeting chaired by Chief Minister Vishnu Deo Sai on Tuesday, 27 October 2026. The Chief Minister's Office of Chhattisgarh announced the decisions via its official X account, listing sweeping changes to how the state buys, verifies, and processes paddy this kharif season.

₹3,100 a quintal, 21 quintals per acre — the numbers that matter

The cabinet fixed the procurement rate at ₹3,100 per quintal, with a ceiling of 21 quintals per acre. That ceiling is a supply-management tool: it keeps procurement costs bounded while ensuring the bulk of smallholder output is covered. Chhattisgarh has a long tradition of setting state procurement rates above the central Minimum Support Price, and this season's figure continues that pattern — a direct income-support signal to the state's farming communities ahead of the harvest rush.

AgriStack does the heavy lifting — no fresh registration required

The most consequential reform in Tuesday's cabinet package is the integration of AgriStack, the national digital farmer-identity platform, into procurement eligibility. Farmers who registered last year and hold an AgriStack ID will be recognised automatically — no separate re-registration, no physical presentation of loan-passbooks at cooperative societies. The state says a digital crop survey will determine paddy acreage online, replacing manual paperwork that has historically been a point of leakage and friction.

AgriStack, built as a federated national registry linking land records, crop data, and financial identities, is designed precisely for moments like this: turning a cumbersome seasonal enrolment exercise into a background database query. Chhattisgarh's adoption signals a step toward the kind of frictionless, verifiable procurement that farm-policy reformers have argued for years would reduce ghost-beneficiary leakage.

Biometric gates and 360 new procurement centres

To plug the remaining gap between digital records and physical delivery, the cabinet mandated biometric-based paddy procurement — a farmer must authenticate identity at the point of sale. The system is designed to ensure that only verified, genuine cultivators receive payment, not intermediaries or ghost registrations.

On the infrastructure side, 360 new procurement centres are being added, bringing the statewide total to 3,100 centres for this season. That expansion directly addresses last year's complaints about congestion and long queues at society-level collection points, and signals that the state is betting on scale — more centres, not just smarter ones — to absorb the volume from 27.50 lakh-plus farmers.

Clearing the backlog: surplus stocks from 2024-25 and 2025-26

The cabinet also ratified a decision of a ministerial sub-committee to resolve excess paddy stocks from the kharif marketing years 2024-25 and 2025-26 through auction. Carrying over unprocessed surplus from two consecutive years creates storage costs and crowding risks for the incoming crop — the auction route is the state's mechanism to clear the pipeline before the November procurement cycle begins. The ratification signals political consensus around a commercially sensitive but operationally necessary move.

With biometric verification, AgriStack integration, a higher network of centres, and a competitive per-quintal rate locked in, Chhattisgarh's paddy procurement machine is set to go live in under three weeks. Whether 3,100 centres and a digital backbone can translate a bold cabinet decision into smooth, queue-free procurement for millions of farmers is the question the harvest season will answer.