First Kanda Express of the season unloads 453 tonnes of onion in Delhi

A 21-wagon rake billed as the first Kanda Express of this spell reached Delhi on Friday with 453.65 tonnes of onion from Nashik. Consumer Affairs Secretary Nidhi Khare told PTI the stock will be sold at Rs 35 a kilogram in Delhi-NCR. Part of it will move on to Chandigarh, Ludhiana and Jammu.

Delhi retail onion was Rs 62 a kilogram on Thursday, the ministry's own price file showed, 88 percent above the Rs 33 of a year earlier. The all-India retail average was Rs 46.58. Wholesale was Rs 38.29. Open-market quotes in the capital on Saturday still sat in the Rs 60-70 band in some shops, with a few states reporting Rs 80.

The Centre holds about 1.21 lakh tonnes under the Price Stabilisation Fund. Khare rejected a claim that 30 percent of that buffer had rotted. They are of good quality, she said. She also said production for 2025-26 is estimated at 307.37 lakh tonnes, almost level with 307.67 lakh tonnes the previous year, and that availability is comfortable. The political problem is not the annual crop total. It is the gap between that total and what a Delhi kitchen paid this week.

Khare said a rake for Chennai would be loaded on Friday, then Madurai, Ernakulam and Guwahati in turn. She expects the Delhi retail price to ease within a week if the subsidised stock actually reaches wet markets rather than sitting in a yard. Four hundred and fifty-three tonnes is a thin first cut against a city that eats onion every day. The 1.21 lakh tonne buffer is the larger tap.

The Kanda Express label is not new. The government used it in 2024-25 with 14 rakes and about 12,000 tonnes. In 2025-26 the count rose to 86 rakes and about 88,000 tonnes across 16 cities. Friday's train is the start of this price-spike run, not a one-off stunt.

Maharashtra farmers have been selling far below the Delhi retail print. Reports from producing belts this week put farm-gate realisations near Rs 1 a kilogram in some lots while the capital paid sixty times that. That spread is the usual onion politics: a perishable crop, a thin cold chain, and a consumer ministry that answers when city prices make the evening bulletin.

Rs 35 subsidised against Rs 62 retail is the offer. The test is whether the Adarsh Nagar unloading photographed on Friday shows up as a lower sticker by next Friday, or whether the rake is remembered as a picture and the buffer stays where it is.