Rice has become a political tool in Kerala with the state government launching its own brand to counter the Union government’s Bharat Rice that the BJP has been leveraging ahead of the Lok Sabha polls.

Kerala chief Pinarayi Vijayan on Wednesday launched Sabari K-Rice in three varieties of boiled rice usually consumed in the state where rice is the staple food.

Unlike Bharat Rice that comes in bags featuring a mug shot of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, K-Rice bags won’t have any image of the chief minister.

The trigger for the new brand of subsidised rice was Bharat Rice, which is sold directly from trucks. The sale of Bharat Rice started in Thrissur, a Lok Sabha constituency that the BJP has been eyeing for long to open its account in Kerala.

Unlike Bharat Rice, which is raw rice used in the state only for breakfast items such as idli and dosa, the state government has sourced sufficient quantities of Jaya, Kuruva and Matta red, all boiled rice, that would be sold at subsidised rates.

Vijayan said the government had acquired the rice at Rs 40 a kilo. While Jaya is sold for Rs 29 a kilo, Kuruva and Matta are sold at Rs 30 a kilo. Each ration card holder can buy bags of 5kg each of any one variety of rice a month.

Vijayan said that while Bharat Rice is sourced at Rs 18.50 a kilo and sold for Rs 29 a kilo.

The Sabari K-Rice variants are sold through over 1,500 SupplyCo supermarkets run by the state government.

A senior official in the food and civil supplies ministry, who declined to be named, told The Telegraph on Wednesday that each ration card holder can buy another 5kg of similarly priced rice from the Supplyco stores each month.

“That will be 10 kilos of good quality boiled rice sold at subsidised rates,” he said.

The official said that the required quantity of rice was sourced from wholesale markets.