"Sugar mills have been permitted to sell 25 per cent of their free sale sugar quota released for November from October 19," an official statement said here.

The decision to advance free sale of sugar quota has been taken as a measure to prevent increase in sugar prices, it said.

The last few days have witnessed an upturn in the prices of sugar due to more demand of the commodity on account of the festival season.

Government had released 10.5 lakh tonne of sugar for October and 9.5 lakh tonne each for November and December 2000 as quotas for free sale.

Earlier, the October quota was made effective from September 25 keeping in view the increase in prices in the free sale market, it said adding that though the prices of free sale sugar had declined in all the principal markets, the last few days had witnessed a rise in prices.