UP fertiliser report: checks hit 315 dealer licences in rabi season

Illustration: NewsPlainly. Not a photograph of the event.

Why it matters

Rabi sowing depends on getting DAP and urea on time, and shortages push farmers to pay extra or wait for hours. The state's figures say stock is higher than last year, so the checks are aimed at hoarding and smuggling rather than a supply gap, while reports from Agra show farmers still struggling to get DAP.

UP fertiliser dealers have had 315 licences suspended and 72 cancelled this rabi season, after the state Agriculture Department checked more than 16,000 shops for black marketing and hoarding. The figures, released by the department and reported by Hindustan on the evening of 7 November 2026 and by Dainik Jagran’s Lucknow bureau on 8 November, also show 48 FIRs (first information reports, the police record that starts a case) and 28 people arrested.

The crackdown comes during sowing of the winter, or rabi, crops in Uttar Pradesh. The department says stock is higher than last year. In Agra, a local news site reported farmers queuing before dawn for DAP (di-ammonium phosphate, a phosphate fertiliser) on 7 November.

UP fertiliser checks: what the department found

Both reports carry the same set of department figures for the rabi season so far. Inspection teams carried out 16,912 raids and checked more than 16,000 fertiliser sale points. Where they found irregularities, 315 sellers had their licences suspended and 72 had them cancelled outright. Police registered 48 cases and arrested 28 accused people. Of the cases, 14 were in districts along the Nepal border, the reports said.

Action this rabi season	Number
Fertiliser sale points checked	More than 16,000
Raids	16,912
Licences suspended	315
Licences cancelled	72
FIRs registered	48 (14 in Nepal-border districts)
People arrested	28

Put together, 387 licences were either suspended or cancelled. Against the more than 16,000 shops checked, that is fewer than 1 in 40, on NewsPlainly’s calculation. The reports did not name any dealer or district other than the border areas, and an arrest is not a finding of guilt.

The state has set up special monitoring teams in districts that border Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh and Nepal, both reports said, to stop fertiliser being smuggled out or stored illegally. Dainik Jagran’s report adds Haryana to that list.

How much fertiliser UP has for the rabi season

The department has put Uttar Pradesh’s need for the rabi season at 26.69 lakh tonnes of fertiliser. By 29 September, 31.62 lakh tonnes were available in the state, against 21.61 lakh tonnes at the same point last year, according to the figures in both reports. On NewsPlainly’s calculation, that is 10.01 lakh tonnes, or about 46%, more than a year earlier.

A second set of numbers covers October. At the end of the month, 2.96 lakh tonnes had been distributed out of 13.15 lakh tonnes, leaving 10.19 lakh tonnes in stock. That means about 22.5% of the end-October stock had gone out to farmers, by NewsPlainly’s arithmetic. The reports do not explain how the 13.15 lakh tonnes relates to the 31.62 lakh tonnes figure, or which fertilisers each number covers, so the two should not be read as one running total.

The department told both papers that availability and distribution are both higher than last year. The state government has ordered daily monitoring of stock and distribution in every district, so that no sale point runs out completely.

DAP shortage complaints from Agra

The official figures sit beside reports of long waits on the ground. Navbharat Live reported that farmers in Agra were lining up at cooperative society outlets from 3 or 4 am for DAP. On Saturday, 7 November, a dispute over DAP distribution at the Barauli Ahir cooperative society turned into pushing and scuffles between farmers and staff, the site reported.

Farmers there alleged that staff favoured people they knew while handing out sacks, and said DAP was not available at private shops either, according to the same report. Those are the farmers’ claims; the report read did not carry a response from the society’s staff. NewsPlainly has not found the Agriculture Department’s own note on the department’s websites, so this article relies on the two newspaper reports for the state figures.

How the checks work at a fertiliser shop

The department said it is watching stock and sales on the MFMS portal, the Mobile Fertilizer Monitoring System, an online system that records fertiliser stock and sales. At shops, inspectors compare the stock physically present with what the point-of-sale (PoS) machine and the shop’s registers show, Dainik Jagran reported. A gap between the two is the kind of irregularity that can lead to a suspension.

For farmers, this means each sale should show up in the shop’s PoS records, which is what inspectors check against the sacks in the shop. The reports read did not give a helpline number for complaints.

NewsPlainly has earlier explained how India’s fertiliser subsidy works and a proposal to change it. More from the state is on our Uttar Pradesh page.

Frequently asked questions

How many fertiliser licences were suspended in UP?

315 dealer licences were suspended and 72 cancelled this rabi season, according to UP Agriculture Department figures reported on 7 and 8 November 2026.

Is there a DAP shortage in UP?

The department says availability is higher than last year, with 31.62 lakh tonnes by 29 September against 21.61 lakh tonnes a year earlier. Farmers in Agra still reported long queues for DAP on 7 November, Navbharat Live said.

How much fertiliser does UP need for rabi?

The department has put the state's rabi requirement at 26.69 lakh tonnes.