NEW DELHI | Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) Delhi State President Saurabh Bharadwaj has urged the CBI to include Minister Manjinder Singh Sirsa in its investigation into the rice scam, stating that Manjinder Singh Sirsa repeatedly forwarded letters and allegedly directed officer for illegal rice procurement but was excluded from the list of accused. In a supplementary complaint, Saurabh Bharadwaj also sought the immediate securing of crucial documents to prevent evidence tampering, citing a written reply by the suspended Deputy Commissioner of the Department of Food and Civil Supplies stating that he had acted on the minister’s instructions. He said the scam was the result of a deliberate criminal conspiracy, not an oversight.
AAP Delhi unit chief Saurabh Bharadwaj said, “A minister who failed with a false defamation case against me, Parvesh Verma, has already tried his hand. Now it is Manjinder Singh Sirsa’s turn to file a false and baseless defamation case against me. On 24 September 2026, I submitted a supplementary complaint to the CBI regarding the theft of 5 crore kilograms of subsidised rice meant for Delhi’s poor, its sale to a private company, and the resulting loss to the public exchequer.”
Saurabh Bharadwaj said he had submitted strong documentary evidence of Minister Manjinder Singh Sirsa’s purported involvement in the rice scam.
“Minister Manjinder Singh Sirsa’s own Deputy Commissioner, Arun Kumar Jha, has named him repeatedly in his written reply to the Department of Food and Civil Supplies,” he added.
“The officer stated in writing that he had acted on Manjinder Singh Sirsa’s instructions, yet he was immediately suspended while the minister continues to hold office. These defamation cases will not deter the Aam Aadmi Party from holding the Bharatiya Janata Party government accountable,” he asserted.
In a supplementary complaint addressed to the CBI Director, Saurabh Bharadwaj welcomed the agency’s FIR against several officials of the Food Corporation of India (FCI), the North Eastern Regional Agricultural Marketing Corporation (NERAMAC) and private intermediaries. “However, a review of the FIR reveals a serious and glaring omission. The alleged principal political facilitator of this institutional embezzlement, Delhi Food and Civil Supplies Minister Manjinder Singh Sirsa, has been left out of the formal list of those named,” he added.
He continued, “Subordinate administrative officials have been named, yet the Cabinet minister who authorised and repeatedly approved the commercial pipeline for this black-market operation remains in office, free to influence the investigation and tamper with crucial records. I have therefore submitted this supplementary complaint to place the minister’s clear, document-supported actions on the CBI’s record and demand his immediate inclusion as a person under investigation in the ongoing criminal probe.”
The AAP Delhi unit chief further highlighted, “A detailed review of official records and statements establishes specific grounds for investigating Minister Manjinder Singh Sirsa’s active complicity. This was not an oversight. It appears to have been a deliberate criminal act carried out under the minister’s direct guidance.”
“Manjinder Singh Sirsa has publicly defended himself by claiming that his signature was merely intended to ‘forward’ a routine request from an out-of-state public sector undertaking. However, his own Food and Civil Supplies Department’s official position completely contradicts this defence. The department’s records treat his written endorsement not as a passive movement of a file, but as a binding administrative recommendation that directly compelled the executive wing to communicate with the FCI,” he added.
Saurabh Bharadwaj further said, “The ‘two-strike’ principle demonstrates deliberate complicity. Administratively, one might accept that a public servant could be misled once by an external entity, resulting in a file being forwarded inadvertently. But the same thing happened a second time, on May 4, 2026.”
He continued, “In less than a month, 31,000 metric tonnes, or 3.1 crore kilograms, of subsidised rice disappeared entirely from Delhi without any distribution data, stock records or utilisation certificates being submitted. Signing off on an identical allocation letter for the second time without demanding an audit demonstrates active and calculated criminal complicity, not bureaucratic negligence.”
Saurabh Bharadwaj noted that under the principle of institutional accountability and command responsibility, the Food and Civil Supplies Department has already acknowledged the wrongdoing by suspending its executive officer, Additional Commissioner Arun Kumar Jha.
“If a subordinate officer faces immediate suspension for implementing a policy deviation, the senior Cabinet minister who discussed and ordered it cannot be shielded from criminal prosecution. The principle of command responsibility requires that the source of unlawful instructions be investigated with the same seriousness as the email trail,” he stated.
The senior AAP leadee stated, “This scam, worth crores of rupees, was carried out under the public-welfare pretext of providing subsidised grain to daily-wage workers, migrant workers and citizens without ration cards in Delhi. In reality, it was a deliberate design to bypass mandatory competitive open-market e-tendering.”
“Minister Manjinder Singh Sirsa’s alleged personal criminal involvement is established through three clear stages of action. First, the e-tendering rules were deliberately circumvented. On January 7, 2026, NERAMAC submitted an initial request seeking a large-scale weekly allocation of 31,000 metric tonnes of rice at ₹23.20 per kilogram, outside a transparent market auction,” he noted.
The minister kept the letter with himself for months and, on April 8, 2026, directly instructed his department to give the request ‘positive consideration’, directing the administration to proceed with this unlawful bypass. This approval allowed the scam to circumvent standard statutory safeguards,” Saurabh Bharadwaj said.
He further said that under the minister’s direct supervision, an ‘off-file’ black-market pipeline was established. “It is also alleged that Following the minister’s instructions, his immediate subordinate, then Additional Commissioner Arun Kumar Jha, who has since been suspended, completely bypassed the official file-management system. Jha dealt with the FCI through unauthorised desk-to-desk emails and issued fake no-objection certificates to facilitate shipments during April and May 2026,” he noted.
“An operation of this scale, involving crores of rupees and the movement of lakhs of kilograms of grain out of the state, could not have taken place without the active supervision, protection and complicity of the Cabinet minister,” he stated.
Saurabh Bharadwaj further said, “The repeated offence and deliberate failure of oversight demonstrate the criminal intent to establish a continuing drain on public resources. On May 4, 2026, NERAMAC applied for a fresh, identical weekly allocation of 31,000 metric tonnes. Even though the first 3.1 crore kilograms of rice had physically disappeared from Delhi within a single month without any paperwork, distribution logs or statutory utilisation certificates, Minister Manjinder Singh Sirsa signed the second request for ‘positive consideration’ without checking a single detail.”
Saurabh Bharadwaj asserted that this amounts to active criminal protection of a black-market pipeline that diverted public resources into private coffers. “There was no mention of the scheme in the media, no press release from the department and no photo opportunity. The way this government and its ministers operate is no secret. Even small welfare activities, such as planting trees, are widely publicised by the government and its ministers in the media and on social media,” he said.
“It is difficult to believe that the government intended to distribute 31,000 metric tonnes of rice among the poor but made no announcement about it through government advertisements, press releases or any media outlet. It appears that the minister deliberately maintained secrecy around this scheme because he knew the rice would never be distributed among the poor. Instead, it was being procured for sale on the black market to generate illegal profits,” he further said.
Saurabh Bharadwaj stated, “There is substantial evidence in the ongoing investigation that directly points towards the minister’s office. Paragraph 10 of the Food and Civil Supplies Department’s official show-cause notice explicitly describes the recommendations made to the FCI as ‘illegal and unauthorised’ and as a direct, unlawful manipulation of the Open Market Sale Scheme (Domestic) policy guidelines.”
“In his formal written reply to the Vigilance Branch, the suspended Additional Commissioner Arun Kumar Jha named Minister Manjinder Singh Sirsa on seven separate occasions. Under his own signature, Jha explicitly stated that every NOC email sent to the FCI, every processing instruction and all structural approvals were executed only after detailed personal discussions with the minister and on the basis of his explicit administrative instructions,” he highlighted.
He asserted that the CBI investigation urgently needs to be expanded, and noted, “The agency’s preliminary investigation has already established the central fraud: instead of reaching poor families in Delhi, subsidised foodgrain was diverted through private channel partners, including M/s Utpalakshi Agro Products, M/s Dibesh Commercial and M/s Super Grains, and sold directly to commercial entities in Haryana at double the price, ₹46 per kilogram.”
“This caused an immediate unlawful price-subsidy gap of ₹13.67 crore per week. Over 22 weeks of operation, the scam resulted in losses worth several crores of rupees. An investigation that arrests and prosecutes mid-level officials who sent the emails while shielding the Cabinet minister who ordered those emails to be sent is incomplete and structurally flawed. Minister Manjinder Singh Sirsa has custody of the ministry’s primary administrative logs and digital assets. Keeping him outside the scope of the FIR poses an immediate threat to the collection of untampered evidence,” he said.
In light of the FIR’s registration and the substantial evidence linking the wrongdoing to the highest levels of the department, he urged the Central Bureau of Investigation to take the following steps:
1) Investigate the minister’s role. Formally expand the scope of the ongoing criminal investigation under the FIR to thoroughly examine Food and Civil Supplies Minister Manjinder Singh Sirsa’s active complicity, abuse of official position and financial dealings,” he said.
2) Secure ministry records. Immediately search the offices of the Food and Supplies Minister, Government of the National Capital Territory of Delhi, and seize and secure all official file-routing logs, personal staff records and electronic email communications for the period from January to June 2026, to prevent their deletion or tampering.
3) Record formal statements. Immediately question or investigate all individuals named in the suspended officer’s confession statement to trace the downstream flow of the scam’s funds, worth crores of rupees.
