Onion prices bite Punjab kitchens as Centre's buffer stock bypasses local markets, mandi-retail gap widens
Onion price in Chandigarh and Punjab stays high for shoppers even as mandi rates lag behind — while Delhi gets Rs 35/kg relief, tricity awaits its share of the Centre’s buffer stock.
North Desk Correspondent
Chandigarh, August 28
Onion price Chandigarh: As the Centre scrambles to control a national onion price surge with buffer stock releases and a special “Kanda Express” freight train, shopkeepers and homemakers across the Chandigarh tricity say the relief has yet to show up on their shelves — even as government mandi records suggest wholesale rates in the region remain far below what customers are being charged at retail.
“We can’t help it, we will only sell at the price we get,” said Mandeep Singh, a shopkeeper in Mohali market in Sector 78, describing the costlier onion stock he has been receiving from suppliers in recent weeks.
The frustration is echoed on the customer side. “Everything has become costly, but onions are hurting the most,” said Jagdeep Kaur, a resident who shops at the Sector 19 market. “You have to use it in all dishes, whether it is vegetable-based or dal or even salad.”
The pinch has reached beyond household kitchens. Several dhabas in the region, known for offering onion slices free and without restraint alongside meals, have begun rationing the practice. “We still give it, but we are cautious now and stingy about it,” one dhaba operator said, describing a shift that would have been unthinkable a few months ago.
Onion price in Chandigarh: The mandi-retail gap
Onion Price Chandigarh: Official mandi data complicates the picture shopkeepers are painting. Chandigarh’s wholesale (mandi) rate has been hovering around Rs 20 per kg, according to commodity market trackers — a fraction of what buyers in Sector 19 and similar markets describe paying at retail. Across Punjab’s 40 reporting mandis, the average modal price stood at Rs 3,110 per quintal (roughly Rs 31/kg) as of August 21, with rates as high as Rs 4,500 per quintal in some markets, per government arrival records.
The gap between what mandis report and what shoppers say they’re paying is precisely the space Union Agriculture Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan pointed to this week, when he blamed middlemen in the agricultural market ecosystem for profiteering and stressed the need to ensure farmers get a fair price while consumers aren’t overcharged. Chouhan recalled that only months ago, the Centre had to step in and buy onions from Maharashtra farmers after prices crashed to Rs 7-8 per kg — not enough to cover production costs — underscoring how sharply the market has swung in the opposite direction since.
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Delhi gets relief at Rs 35/kg — does Chandigarh?
Onion Price Chandigarh: The Centre’s response has centred on Delhi so far. The Department of Consumer Affairs began retail sale of onions at Rs 35 per kg in the national capital this week — a 44 percent discount to prevailing market rates — drawing on buffer stock built up through the Price Stabilisation Fund. Consumer Affairs Secretary Nidhi Khare cited black marketing, hoarding and profiteering as drivers of the price rise.
A 21-bogie “Kanda Express” carrying roughly 450 metric tonnes of onions left Lasalgaon in Nashik — Asia’s largest onion wholesale market — for Delhi on Wednesday, part of 840 MT the Centre has earmarked for the capital from Price Stabilisation Fund stock.
Less visible has been what happens outside Delhi. The Consumer Affairs Ministry’s own statement on the buffer release names Chandigarh, Amritsar and Jammu among the cities receiving road consignments of buffer onions, alongside larger road shipments to Chennai, Kolkata, Lucknow, Patna and other consumption centres. But unlike the Rs 35/kg retail counters set up in Delhi through NCCF, NAFED, Safal and Kendriya Bhandar outlets, there is no indication yet that a similar subsidised retail channel has opened in Chandigarh or the wider tricity — raising the question of whether the “relief” reaching this region is being sold to consumers at a discount at all, or simply absorbed into the wholesale chain before it reaches shoppers like Kaur.
Onion Price Chandigarh: The Centre maintains that overall onion availability remains comfortable, citing 2025-26 production estimates of 307.37 lakh tonnes — nearly flat compared to the previous year — and robust exports of 3.82 lakh tonnes between April and June to Malaysia, Sri Lanka, the UAE and Nepal, which it says reflect adequate domestic supply. For shoppers in Sector 19, that reassurance has yet to translate into a lighter grocery bill.
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