Second Kanda Express unloads 840 tonnes of buffer onion in Chennai

The second Kanda Express rake reached Chennai on 31 August with 840 tonnes of onion drawn from the central buffer. The Consumer Affairs Ministry said on 1 September that Tamil Nadu would issue 1 kilogram per ration card through the Public Distribution System and push the stock out across districts.

The first rake, 450 tonnes, had reached Delhi late on 27 August. Of that load, 140 tonnes went on to Varanasi, Lucknow, Chandigarh and Amritsar. The rest was sold in Delhi-NCR through Nafed, NCCF and Kendriya Bhandar counters, at a subsidised retail tag the ministry had earlier put at Rs 35 a kilogram in the capital.

Both rakes started in Nashik, which supplies most of the government's summer onion buffer. The ministry is running a mixed model this year: dedicated railway rakes under the Kanda Express name, plus more than 30 trucks into 19 cities. The city list includes Delhi, Jaipur, Jammu, Dehradun, Shimla, Amritsar, Chandigarh, Kolkata, Guwahati, Lucknow, Varanasi, Patna, two Bihar centres, Bhubaneswar, Chennai, Madurai, Thrissur and Kochi. About 1,000 tonnes is moving by road on current price signals.

The buffer itself is thinner than the plan. The Centre had wanted 2 lakh tonnes of summer onion. Nafed and NCCF together took in about 1.15 to 1.20 lakh tonnes. More than 90 percent of that stock is estimated to have come from the Nashik belt. A Nafed official told the Times of India in late August that about 30 percent of 1.2 lakh tonnes had already been lost to rotting and sprouting, and that the loss could touch 40 percent. That is the hidden number behind the trains.

Retail prices had been running far above last year when the rakes were loaded. Chennai was near Rs 60 a kilogram against Rs 33 a year earlier. Delhi was near Rs 55 against Rs 35. Kolkata was near Rs 53. After the first dispatch was announced, Lasalgaon, the main Nashik market, eased by about Rs 250 a quintal to around Rs 4,000. That is a wholesale twitch, not a retail collapse.

The ministry said Rs 210 crore has been paid directly to about 3,400 farmers. It also said prices softened from the day after disposal began. The claim is limited and dated. A 840-tonne rake into a state the size of Tamil Nadu is a signal to traders more than a full substitute for the mandi. One kilogram on a ration card is a kitchen hedge for a week, not a reset of the price line.

Storage in Nashik district is close to 24 lakh tonnes on paper. Agriculture officials said only about a quarter of farmer-held stock was still in those structures in late August, and that usable buffer could be exhausted by late September or early October, before the next crop arrives. If that calendar holds, the rakes in the next four weeks matter more than the rakes already parked.

Kanda Express is not new. In 2024-25 the government ran 14 rakes and about 12,000 tonnes to five cities. In 2025-26 it ran 86 rakes and about 88,000 tonnes to 16 cities. This year's early rakes are smaller because the procurement itself was smaller and because a third of what was bought is already compromised.

The useful test in Chennai is whether the PDS kilogram actually reaches the ration shop this week and whether the retail quote in Koyambedu moves after it does. The ministry can count tonnes on a rake. The household counts the price on the heap.