In an endeavour to achieve enhanced agricultural export, India implemented the Agricultural Export Policy 2018 to augment its overall efforts toward agricultural export promotion. The Agricultural Export Policy ambitiously aims to double India’s exports by 2022. Moreover, the policy lists down the key objectives and provides a roadmap for overcoming strategic and operational challenges for agricultural export promotion. Meanwhile, India’s agricultural products have witnessed an increased spate of export restrictions. In 2022, citing domestic concerns on food availability, price affordability amid rising inflation, lower domestic output, increased consumption, and speculative trading, India restricted exports of rice, wheat, and sugar, thereby diverting some of them toward alternate uses. Export restrictions have compromised India’s ability to emerge as a reliable supplier to the world and have undermined the obligations to the agreed trade rules and policies. Accordingly, this study helps us understand the key motivations for such export restrictions, types of instruments used and examined at policy and practical levels, the rationale for such export restrictions. Furthermore, the study comprehensively and empirically examines incidence-based policy interventions and supplements it with specific cases. The findings indicate that the reasons cited by policymakers with regard to export restrictions hold little ground. The study suggests an action plan to eliminate dichotomy in India’s Agricultural Export Policy so that India can emerge as a reliable supplier of agricultural products in the world.