 "AAP, Aaj Tak and the 'teary' tale of onions")
Sunday was a busy day for the Aam Aadmi Party’s Delhi government and media channels alike. On air were the usual back and forth of political debates regarding an alleged scam over sale of onions in Delhi.
A report on Hindi news channel Aaj Tak, quoting a Right to Information (RTI) document, claimed that the Delhi government allegedly procured 2,511 tonnes of onion from Small Farmer Agri-Business Consortium (SFAC), a central government agency, at Rs 18.57 a kg (including local expenses), and later declared Rs 32.86 as the procurement cost and Rs 7 as additional surcharge, transportation cost and other expenses, on every kg of onions. It later decided to subsidise the price by Rs 10 per kg kg and sold onions for Rs 30 per kg, the report claimed.
But a document by SFAC that surfaced later and got widely tweeted, clearly showed the price as Rs 32,868.71 per tonne. That is Rs 32.86 per kg.
After the story had been run for hours, alleging this was the first scam by the seven-month-old AAP government, the so-called ‘onion scam’ took a u-turn. Delhi Deputy Chief Minister hit back at the TV channel and clarified that the so-called ‘onion scam’ was completely fake.
The documents he presented showed that the onions were procured from national agencies like National Agricultural Cooperative Marketing Federation of India (Nafed) and SFAC. “It is absolutely false that we purchased onions from Nashik. Instead, Nafed and SFAC bought onions from Maharashtra at Rs 18 a kg on behalf of the Centre. That was sold to the Delhi government at Rs 32.86. The additional Rs 14 per kg was charged as administrative expenses by the Bharatiya Janata Party-led central government. If there is any irregularity, it is on behalf on Nafed and SFAC,” Sisodia said.
A day after #AajTakChor trending on microblogging website Twitter and Twitterati expressing their anger at the TV channel, a full-page advertisement by AAP on appeared in national dailies on Monday. Many even went as far as to support Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal and his government for his ad campaigns and the money set aside in the state budget for such campaigns.