Uttar Pradesh's Cane Development Department says the state has paid 94.86 percent of sugarcane dues for the 2025-26 crushing season, with 102 sugar mills having cleared their farmer payments in full. The figures were released Wednesday and credited, in the government's own framing, to continuous monitoring by Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath.

The numbers break down across mill ownership. Twenty-three cooperative sugar mills, spread from Anupshahr and Baghpat to Sultanpur and Tilhar, paid out Rs 2,820.89 crore between them, according to the department, and all of them have hit 100 percent payment. The three mills run directly by the State Sugar Corporation paid Rs 543.51 crore. Private mills, the government says, have also cleared full dues.

Zoom out and the number that the state keeps repeating is Rs 3.25 lakh crore. That's the cumulative sum the government says it has transferred to sugarcane farmers since it took office, a figure it's calling the highest sugarcane price payout by any state in the country. It also claims the top spot nationally in sugarcane production, molasses output and ethanol production, and points to a jump of Rs 40,720 per hectare in average farmer income this season as evidence the model is working.

Over the last nine years, the department says, mills in the state have crushed 9,220 lakh tonnes of cane, against 6,168 lakh tonnes in the nine years before that, a jump of just over 3,000 lakh tonnes. Sugar output over that stretch touched a claimed record of 879.06 lakh tonnes.

Division-wise, the picture is uneven

Payment percentages vary a fair bit by region even as the state-level average sits near 95 percent. Ayodhya division is at full payment, Rs 1,212.35 crore cleared. Moradabad is close behind at 98.96 percent on Rs 6,398.36 crore, and Deoria at 97.86 percent. Lucknow division has paid out the largest sum in absolute terms, Rs 6,462.19 crore, but that's only 91.34 percent of what's owed there. Bareilly trails the pack at 89.25 percent against dues of Rs 2,315.74 crore.

Moradabad, Lucknow and Saharanpur divisions between them account for the bulk of the money moved this season, over Rs 17,600 crore combined, per the department's own division-wise breakup.

All of this comes from the state government's own accounting, released through its Cane Development Department, and there's no independent audit cited alongside it. Farmer unions in Uttar Pradesh have in past seasons disputed official payment timelines even when aggregate percentages looked healthy, and it isn't yet clear whether that pattern repeats this year. The remaining roughly five percent of dues, and how quickly the laggard divisions like Bareilly close the gap, will be the number worth watching as the 2025-26 season wraps up.