Among beneficiaries of centre’s scheme: wife, son, mother of IAS officer

It’s not just the Union Minister.

The mother, wife and son of a senior IAS officer are also among the beneficiaries in Rajasthan of the scheme under the Union Ministry of Agriculture and Farmers’ Welfare to promote commercial farming, records investigated by The Indian Express show.

Records show the three family members of Naresh Pal Gangwar, a 1994-batch Rajasthan-cadre IAS officer, who is a Secretary in the Ministry of Fisheries, Animal Husbandry and Dairying, received a total of over Rs 1.16 crore in subsidies across five years under the scheme.

Titled “Development of Commercial Horticulture through Production and Post-Harvest Management of Horticulture crops”, the scheme is run by National Horticulture Board (NHB) under the Union Agriculture Ministry.

According to records, Gangwar has disclosed details of only one project approved under the scheme in the mandatory annual declaration of immovable property with the Department of Personnel and Training (DoPT) for 2021-22. Gangwar told The Indian Express that service rules mandate that he declare only the large scale for profit — of select vegetables and flowers comes under Mission for Integrated Development of Horticulture (MIDH), which was launched in 2014-15 and is administered by the National Horticulture Board (NHB), an autonomous organisation under the administrative control of Choudhary’s Ministry.

The initiative offers a maximum subsidy of 50 per cent, capped at Rs 1 crore per family, of the project cost for farming capsicum, cucumber and tomato, and eight varieties of flowers, including rose, anthurium and orchids (see adjacent story).

Choudhary’s project for cucumber cultivation across 16,592 sq m is one of 467 approved by NHB in 2025 under the scheme titled “Development of Commercial Horticulture through Production and Post-Harvest Management of Horticulture Crops”.

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According to NHB’s official website, its activities are managed by a Board of Directors headed by the Union Agriculture Minister as ex-officio President, with the Union MoS for Agriculture as ex-officio Vice-President.

While the Board’s official website lists its ex-officio Vice-President as “Hon’ble Minister of State for Agriculture & Farmers Welfare”, the emails provided are [email protected]/ [email protected].

Other members include the Secretary, Department of Agriculture and Farmers’ Welfare; the Director General, Indian Council of Agricultural Research; and other officials and representatives of the horticulture industry.

On paper, the MoS has no direct role in approving projects for subsidy under the scheme. The final approval is granted by an NHB project approval committee that does not include the board’s president or vice-president.

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The Indian Express sent a questionnaire to Choudhary, detailing its findings and seeking his response on whether the subsidy constituted a case of conflict of interest. His office confirmed receipt of the email, but Choudhary was unavailable for comment.

Official data shows that of the 467 projects, with a total cost of Rs 144 crore and covering an area of 677 acres, that were approved during the financial year 2025-26 under this scheme, there were 60 that received over Rs 50 lakh each as subsidy.

The Indian Express visited the project site at Choudhary’s farm in Peeh village of Rajasthan’s Deedwana-Kuchaman district. Apart from the subsidy amount, the signboard put up at the site — part of mandatory requirement under the scheme — shows the total cost of the project as “1,99,20,000” (Rs 1.99 crore).

It states that the promoter’s share was “49,80,000” (Rs 49.8 lakh) — and that the Minister took a loan of “1,49,40,000” (Rs 1.49 crore) from HDFC Bank for the project.

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Records show that Choudhary, who is the BJP MP from Ajmer and has been MoS at the Agriculture Ministry since 2024, filed an application for clearance to start work on the project under the NHB scheme on April 15, 2025. The project was granted in-principle approval under the scheme 14 days later, on April 29, 2025.

On March 11, 2026, records show, the project received final clearance from NHB. And, on March 30, “capital investment subsidy” of Rs 99.03 lakh was credited to Choudhary’s HDFC Bank loan account at Kishangarh in Rajasthan. The records reviewed by this newspaper on the transfer of subsidy do not mention the remaining Rs 57,000 from the amount of “99,60,000” shown on the signboard.

Records show that in Peeh, Choudhary owns 9.7 hectares of agricultural land under khata number 315 (khasra numbers 508, 509, 610, 611, 621) and 1.1332 hectares under khata number 991 (khasra numbers 2315/510).

Khasra is the number assigned to an agricultural plot or field, and acts as an identifier in land records. Khata is the record that provides details of all plots owned by an individual or family within a village.

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Choudhary’s last available declaration to the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO), as on March 31, 2025, recorded Rs 4.41 crore worth of immovable and movable assets. The list includes agricultural land at 11 locations, including Khata/Khasra numbers 315, 1053, 1053/1 and 1058 at Peeh, valued at Rs 5.85 lakh. There is no specific mention of the NHB project, which received initial approval under the scheme a month later. An aide at the Minister’s office said details of the project “will be disclosed to the government”.

It was not the first time Choudhary had applied for subsidy under the scheme. Records show he had submitted an application in September 2018, but that was rejected due to a delay in receiving the hard copy. That same year, his son Subhash Choudhary had applied for a mixed vegetable/ cucumber project in Peeh village, but the application was rejected because a “structure” used in the project was “not eligible under the scheme guidelines”.

KEY TAKEAWAYS

The mother, wife, and son of senior IAS officer Naresh Pal Gangwar — currently a Secretary in the Department of Animal Husbandry and Dairying — collectively received over Rs 1.16 crore in subsidies under the same NHB scheme across five years.

Gangwar is a 1994-batch Rajasthan-cadre officer, making his family’s repeated claims under a scheme administered by a ministry in his own government a pointed conflict-of-interest question.

He disclosed only one of the approved projects in his mandatory DoPT property declaration for 2021-22, claiming service rules limit what must be reported.

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The scheme caps subsidy at Rs 1 crore per family — yet records show Gangwar’s family received Rs 1.16 crore, spread across three members to stay within per-person limits.

Like Minister Choudhary, Gangwar did not substantively respond to The Indian Express questionnaire on the disclosures.

The two cases together suggest the NHB scheme — meant for commercial farmers — has become a quiet pipeline of government money to those already inside the system.