Textiles Minister assesses MSP operations for cotton procurement ahead of Kharif season

Union Textiles Minister Giriraj Singh chaired a high-level meeting to assess the preparedness for Minimum Support Price (MSP) operations for cotton procurement during the Kharif Marketing Season 2025-26 starting October 1, 2025.

Reiterating the government's commitment to the welfare of cotton farmers, Singh assured that all kapas arriving under MSP guidelines will be procured without disruption, with a focus on timely, transparent, and farmer-centric service delivery.

"Starting this season, nationwide Aadhaar-based self-registration of cotton farmers and 7-day rolling slot booking will be facilitated via the newly launched 'Kapas-Kisaan' mobile app.

"This digital platform aims to streamline procurement operations, ensure transparency and enable direct Aadhaar-linked payments to farmers' bank accounts through the National Automated Clearing House. The SMS-based payment intimation service introduced last year will also continue," the Textile Ministry said.

The minister reaffirmed the Centre's vision to protect the interests of cotton farmers by ensuring remunerative price for their produce and accelerate the shift towards a digitally empowered cotton ecosystem.

Senior officials from Ministry of Textiles and the Cotton Corporation of India (CCI) were present in the meeting chaired by the minister on Tuesday.

"In line with the government's Digital India vision, all processes -- right from procurement of cotton by CCI under MSP operations to sale of stocks -- are now completely faceless and paperless, strengthening farmers' and other stake-holders confidence and trust in MSP operations," Singh said.

For the first time, uniform norms have been laid down for the establishment of procurement centres, factoring in key parameters such as cotton cultivation area, availability of functional Agricultural Produce Market Committee (APMC) yards and at least availability of one stock processing factory at cotton procurement centre, he added.

The textiles ministry shared that a record 550 procurement centres have been set up across major cotton-producing states. Procurement of cotton under MSP will commence from October 1 in the Northern states, October 15 in the Central states and from October 21, 2025 in the Southern states.

To enhance on-ground support, Local Monitoring Committees (LMC) will be constituted at each APMC mandi for immediate grievance redressal by states.

Additionally, dedicated state-level helplines and a Central CCI helpline will remain active throughout the procurement period. Adequate manpower deployment, logistics support and other infrastructural arrangements would be in place before commencement of cotton season, it added.