The Centre Thursday extended the deadline for delivery of Custom Milled Rice (CMR) for the 2025-26 crop to November 30, 2026. This comes even as paddy harvesting in Punjab is slated to begin by October this year.Traditionally, 70–80 per cent of milling is completed by March and the rest by June-end. However, for the last couple of seasons, milling is extending to September.A letter in this regard from the Under Secretary Ministry of Consumer Affairs, Food and Public Distributior Department of Food and Public Distribution was sent to Punjab Thursday. The letter also asked the Punjab government and the Food Corporation of India to take necessary steps to check recycling of rice, if any. It directed that field-level monitoring be undertaken to track the delivery of the balance CMR mill-wise according to a schedule submitted by state agencies. The FCI has also been asked to conduct age tests at the time of rice delivery under a protocol to be devised.With stocks from one procurement season spilling into the next and the milling window getting increasingly stretched, Punjab’s rice mills are entering a cycle they were not used to seeing.The prolonged movement of rice means stocks from previous years are still occupying storage space when the fresh crop arrives. Millers fear that this could turn into a never-ending cycle of overlapping stocks and continuous milling in future unless the government finds an out-of-the-box solution to the storage crunch and creates enough space to absorb the fresh crop each year.Paddy harvesting in Punjab generally begins in late September or early October, while the official procurement season starts on October 1. Procurement activity normally continues through October and November and largely winds down by the end of November. Millers, meanwhile, generally begin large-scale milling of the newly procured paddy from December onwards.The storage crunch is being compounded by the limited space available with government agencies. With FCI storage capacity in Punjab already heavily occupied, millers fear that clearing old rice into government godowns will not happen quickly enough and already filled godowns will not create space for storing CMR of the fresh crop.Story continues below this adPunjab has around 5,200 rice mills, and millers estimate that nearly 80 per cent of them continue to have paddy from the previous season in their premises. Around 10 lakh metric tonnes of rice from the previous season is also yet to be delivered.Millers say the problem is not simply the extended deadline. The larger concern is whether adequate space will be available when the milling of fresh paddy starts as this year a bumper crop is expected.The situation is difficult across the state and even in Hoshiarpur, Pathankot and Gurdaspur, where rice is also moved by road to Jammu and Kashmir and Himachal Pradesh. Millers say stocks meant for these states have also not moved at the required pace because of limited demand.Gyan Bhardwaj, president of the Rice Millers’ Association, Punjab, said the industry had held around three meetings with the FCI and government over the issue but had not found an immediate solution. “We have no option, the space crunch can be eased only if the Centre facilitates exports and some rice is moved out of Punjab. We are not even getting enough time for maintenance of the mills. We are also facing recurring charges because the mills are continuously running without any proper break. Earlier, at least, we used to get a 5–6 month rest period for maintenance work. Now, because of the continuous operation, we neither get sufficient time for maintenance nor a break from the recurring expenses,” he said.Story continues below this adBhardwaj added that allegations of recycling should not be treated as established facts.“Prolonged storage causes the moisture content of paddy to fall, reducing its weight. To make up the shortfall and avoid penalties from FCI, millers sometimes have to procure rice from other states. Why should millers be forced to store paddy for over a year when CMR is supposed to be delivered by June at the latest?” a miller said, adding that FCI calls it recycling.Bhardwaj said the focus should shift to other states for rice recycling process, rather than Punjab, which already produces huge quantities of paddy. The government has set this year’s target at 18 million tonnes, but actual production is expected to exceed 19 million tonnes in the state.Nikita Pawar, General Manager (Region) of FCI Punjab, told The Indian Express that demand for foodgrains, including rice, from other states has declined due to increased local procurement in other states, resulting in slower movement of grain from Punjab and deepening the storage crunch which led to extension of the delivery of CMR.