Aam Aadmi Party's Delhi unit president Saurabh Bharadwaj on Sunday alleged a ₹22,000-crore scam in the diversion of subsidised rice meant for the capital's poor, pointing fingers at a department of the Delhi government run by the BJP, a corporation based in BJP-ruled Assam, and an unnamed private firm in Haryana, another state run by the Centre's ruling party.
“A new scam of the Delhi government has come to light, and this scam is so big that it will blow your mind — a rice scam,” Bharadwaj, who served as a minister when Arvind Kejriwal was CM, said in a video message shared on X.
In the video and an accompanying post, he alleged a chain involving four actors, essentially saying that rice meant for the poor was sold to a firm in Haryana, with money made illegally in the process. He said the national-level Food Corporation of India was the source of the rice, which was requested by the Delhi government's food and civil supplies department. This rice, he said, instead went to an Assam-based corporation as receiver; and then was sold to a private buyer in Haryana.
Who supplied the rice?
Bharadwaj said such subsidised rice is released only to state governments for a narrowly defined set of beneficiaries, “…so that the poor people in states who don't have ration cards — migrant labourers, daily-wagers, poor people”. “For them, the Food Corporation of India gives rice to the state government at a very cheap, subsidised rate, so that the state government distributes it further,” he said.
{{/usCountry}}Bharadwaj said such subsidised rice is released only to state governments for a narrowly defined set of beneficiaries, “…so that the poor people in states who don't have ration cards — migrant labourers, daily-wagers, poor people”. “For them, the Food Corporation of India gives rice to the state government at a very cheap, subsidised rate, so that the state government distributes it further,” he said.
{{/usCountry}}Who had asked for it?
Bharadwaj said the request for rice supply was made by the Delhi food department headed by BJP minister Manjinder Singh Sirsa. “That department wrote a letter to the Food Corporation of India saying give them rice at subsidised rate,” he said.
Neither Sirsa nor any spokesperson of the Delhi government, headed by CM Rekha Gupta, had responded to the assertions as of 1:30pm, Sunday, August 9.
Who received it?
Bharadwaj alleged the Delhi government asked that an “Assam-based corporation” — he did not specify — be supplied 31,000 metric tonnes of rice a week, and that supply actually began. “The Delhi government wrote to the Food Corporation of India saying, ‘give them 31,000 metric tonnes of rice every week... and it started being given, and this went on for several weeks’,” Bharadwaj said.
In his post on X, he wrote: “A corporation based in Assam and the Delhi government sent a formal request to FCI to get heavily subsidised rice from FCI (Food Corporation of India). A huge quantity of 31,000 metric tons of rice per week was demanded to be distributed among the poor of Delhi.”
Where it ended up, how much money was involved, as per Bharadwaj
The rice never reached beneficiaries in Delhi, Bharadwaj alleged. “[Delhi government] was buying cheap rice, [but] it wasn't distributing it to any poor person in Delhi. It was selling that rice to some private company in Haryana at expensive rates,” he said, adding that the Assam-based corporation was “earning a commission of around ₹70 crore every week, or a profit of ₹70 crore”.
He put the weekly value of the alleged diversion at ₹143 crore. “Not annual, not yearly, not monthly, but weekly — a ₹143 crore weekly scam,” he said. Over a projected three years, he pegged the total at ₹22,000 crore, and the Assam corporation's share at “around ₹11,000 or ₹12,000 crore”.
Bharadwaj credited the Centre with detecting the arrangement, though PM Narendra Modi's government has not yet responded to his claims. “The central government's vigilance department caught this, and when they caught it, action fell on several people,” Bharadwaj said, without naming any official or specifying exact timelines.
Third charge in three months
The rice allegation is the third that the AAP has levelled at the Rekha Gupta government in as many months. In June, the party alleged a ₹650-crore scam in health department procurement, citing an Anti-Corruption Bureau FIR of June 2 and questioning why the man named in it as principal accused had not been arrested. On August 2, it alleged a ₹90-crore tender for bicycles for Class 9 schoolgirls was “tailored to a pre-selected firm”. The government rejected that charge.
There was no immediate response from Sirsa, the Delhi government or the FCI on the “rice scam” allegation.