NEW DELHI, Jan 30 (Reuters) - India is likely to announce the auction of a new 10-year paper as part of its weekly debt sale on Feb. 3, with the existing 10-year bond having reached its unofficial upper limit of issuance, a government official aware of the matter said.

"We have got feedback from the market that we should continue with the existing 10-year bond issuance. However, we would like to be consistent and come up with a new one," the official said on condition of anonymity, as they were not authorised to speak to the media.

The government is due to sell bonds worth 280 billion rupees on Feb. 3, which will include 120 billion rupees worth of 10-year securities, according to the federal calendar.

The central government generally stops issuing a note once the outstanding reaches around 1.50 trillion rupees ($18.37 billion), though there is no official maximum limit on issuance.

The outstanding of the current benchmark 7.26% 2032 bond has reached 1.48 trillion rupees with the yield at 7.38% as of 0430 GMT.

The coupon of a new 10-year paper typically comes below the prevailing benchmark bond yield, and the yield curve moves in alignment with this change.

"Mostly, the new 10-year note will be issued and we do not want any surprises in market borrowing (pattern). We would not like a situation where we will have to make a big bunch of repayments," the source said.

Bonds worth 5.34 trillion rupees are due to mature in 2032-33, according to data from the Reserve Bank of India.

India's finance minister Nirmala Sitaraman will announce the budget for 2023/24 on Wednesday.

The government is likely to keep its gross market borrowing below 16 trillion rupees for 2023/24 as it does not want to destabilise the bond market with any negative surprises, two sources close to the deliberations said. ($1 = 81.6525 Indian rupees) (Writing by Dharamraj Dhutia in Mumbai; Editing by Swati Bhat and Janane Venkatraman)