The development comes days after the state govt revised the cane state advisory price (SAP) by Rs 20 per quintal.
During a review meeting held on Friday, officials were asked to curb the alleged illegal sugarcane procurement.

The department in a statement said that a record sugarcane price payment of Rs. 2,35,073 crore has been made to the farmers of the state in the last six-and-a-half-year. In the ongoing cane crushing season, a payment of Rs 14,200 crore has been made, which is about 82% of the total dues.

So far, about 58 lakh tonnes of sugar has been produced by 120 operational sugar mills by crushing 574 lakh tonnes of sugarcane. The sugarcane area in the crushing season 2016-17 was 20.54 lakh hectares. This has now increased to 29.66 lakh hectares — an increase of 44.4%. Sugarcane productivity increased from 72.38 tonnes per hectare in 2016-17 to 83.95 tonnes per hectare — an increase of 11.57 tonnes per hectare – in the current season.

At the same time, the state government has directed the officials to promote the use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in issuing pest attack alerts and monitoring the overall health of crop. The officials said that farmers can get better results with technical assistance in various tasks including weather forecasting, paddy management, proper water supply, automation technology in irrigation, drones, soil sampling, data analysis and crop planting.

The gross enrolment ratio (GER) in higher education in Bihar has increased to 17.1% in 2021-22 from 15.9% in 2020-21, according to the All India Survey on Higher Education (AISHE) 2021-22. GER in Bihar has increased by 5% in the last five years.