Before 2017, ration cards meant for the poor in Uttar Pradesh never reached them — Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath says Samajwadi Party functionaries pocketed those cards while the hungry went without. Today, he says, that era is over.

Posting on Monday, August 17, 2026, CM Yogi wrote in Hindi: 'वर्ष 2017 के पहले गरीब का राशन कार्ड सपाई अपने घर में रख लेते थे और गरीब भूख से मरता था' — 'Before 2017, Samajwadi Party workers used to keep the poor man's ration card at their own homes, and the poor would die of hunger.' He contrasted that with the present: more than 15 crore people in the state now receive free grain through the Pradhan Mantri Garib Kalyan Anna Yojana (PM-GKAY).

The scheme at the centre of the claim

PM-GKAY is a central government food security programme that provides free foodgrains — typically 5 kg per person per month — to beneficiaries covered under the National Food Security Act. Originally launched during the COVID-19 pandemic to cushion the economic shock on the poorest households, the scheme was extended and eventually made permanent by the central government. Uttar Pradesh, as India's most populous state, accounts for one of the largest beneficiary pools in the country.

A direct hit at the Samajwadi Party's record

CM Yogi's post is an explicit political contrast: the BJP government that took office in March 2017 against the preceding Samajwadi Party administration. The allegation of ration-card misappropriation — local party workers retaining cards and diverting entitlements — has been a recurring BJP charge against the SP era in UP. By anchoring the attack to a concrete beneficiary number (15 crore-plus), the post frames welfare delivery as the sharpest dividing line between the two regimes.

The figure of 15 crore beneficiaries in a single state underscores UP's demographic weight: the state alone holds roughly one in every six Indians, making its food-security pipeline one of the largest logistics operations in the world.

What the numbers mean on the ground

At 15 crore recipients, nearly half of Uttar Pradesh's estimated population of around 24-25 crore is receiving subsidised or free grain under the scheme — a scale that reflects both the depth of poverty in the state and the breadth of the NFSA coverage. The political implication is equally blunt: if those households are receiving grain they were previously denied, they represent a formidable electoral constituency that both the BJP and the SP will contest hard.

CM Yogi has built a significant part of his governance narrative around welfare delivery — from free ration to direct benefit transfers — positioning the state machinery as a corrective to what he calls a decade of 'mafia raj' and patronage politics. This post is that argument, compressed into two sentences and a number.