AAP's Bharadwaj alleges ₹22,000 crore subsidised rice scam by Delhi govt
Aam Aadmi Party leader and former Delhi minister Saurabh Bharadwaj has accused the Bharatiya Janata Party government in Delhi of executing a ₹22,000 crore scam involving subsidised rice meant for the city's poor residents.
In statements shared through a video and a post on social media platform X, Bharadwaj alleged that the Delhi government collaborated with an Assam-based corporation to fraudulently divert tons of food grains. According to the AAP leader, a formal request was sent to the Food Corporation of India seeking a weekly supply of 31,000 metric tons of heavily subsidised rice.
Bharadwaj claimed that the department of Delhi's minister of food, supplies and consumer affairs, Manjinder Singh Sirsa, wrote to the Food Corporation of India to request the massive weekly quota of rice. The official justification presented for the request was the distribution of subsidized food grains to poor citizens across the national capital.
However, Bharadwaj alleged that the subsidised rice never reached a single poor individual in Delhi. Instead of being distributed locally, the entire weekly allocation of 31,000 metric tons sent to the Assam-based corporation was sold directly to a private company in Haryana to generate heavy commercial profits.
The AAP leader characterized the operation as a planned scheme amounting to ₹143 crore per week. He asserted that the operation was structured to continue for three years, bringing the total value of the alleged fraud to ₹22,000 crore over that timeframe.
Detailing the mechanics of the alleged payout, Bharadwaj claimed in his video message that the Assam-based corporation alone was making a commission of ₹70 crore every week from the illicit sales. He calculated that had the arrangement continued uninterrupted over the full three years, the corporation would have extracted approximately ₹11,000 crore in commission.
Bharadwaj also claimed that it was the Central government's vigilance department that ultimately identified the fraudulent operation involving the Delhi government and the Assam-based entity.
