With Assam Implementing 'One Nation, One Ration Card' Scheme, Food Security Now Fully Portable Across India

With Assam implementing the 'One Nation One Ration Card' (ONORC) scheme, all the 36 states and UTs of India are now under the ambit of the Central government's ambitious programme, making food security portable throughout the country, the Ministry of Consumer Affairs, Food and Public Distribution said in a release on Tuesday (21 June).

During the last two years of COVID-19 pandemic, ONORC plan has significantly contributed in ensuring subsidised foodgrains to NFSA (National Food Security Act) beneficiaries, especially migrant beneficiaries.

The ONORC, a one-of-its-kind citizen centric initiative in the country, was launched in August 2019, and covers about 80 crore beneficiaries.

According to the ministry, the objective of this beneficiary centric high-impact programme is to empower all NFSA beneficiaries to become AtmaNirbhar for their food security anywhere in the country, through portability of their existing ration cards enabling them to seamlessly lift their entitled subsidised foodgrains (in part or full) from any Fair Price Shop of their choice.

This also enables their family members to lift balance or required amount of foodgrains on the same ration card at their native or any place from the FPS of their choice, the ministry said.

Since its inception in August 2019, about 71 crore portable transactions (43.6 crore NFSA and 27.8 crore PM-GKAY transactions) have taken place under ONORC, delivering foodgrains equivalent to about Rs 40,000 Crore in food subsidy through portability.

About 64 crore portable transactions have been recorded during COVID-19 period itself (from April 2020 till date) delivering foodgrains equivalent to about Rs. 36,000 Crore in food subsidy through portability.

Out of these 64 crore portable transactions, 27.8 crore portability transactions were recorded under PMGKAY (Pradhan Mantri Garib Kalyan Anna Yojana), which was announced in March 2020 for distribution of additional free-of-cost foodgrains (Rice/Wheat) to NFSA beneficiaries to mitigate the Covid induced hardships.

Additionally, as a key indicator, presently a monthly average of about 3 crore portable transactions are being recorded, delivering the subsidised NFSA and free PMGKAY foodgrains with anywhere flexibility to the beneficiaries.

Another dimension under ONORC plan is the ‘MERA RATION’ mobile application which has been rolled out to take maximum advantage of the ONORC plan.

The mobile app is providing a host of useful real time information to the beneficiaries and is available in 13 languages. So far, the App has been downloaded more than 20 lakh times from Google play store.