The Central government’s One Nation One Ration Card plan has included four more states/UT – Manipur, Nagaland, Uttarakhand, and Jammu and Kashmir.
Union Minister of Consumer Affairs, Food and Public Distribution Ram Vilas Paswan reviewed the progress of One Nation One Ration Card plan on Saturday, the Consumer Affairs, Food and Public Distribution Ministry said in a release.
Taking note of the requisite technical readiness of Jammu and Kashmir, Manipur, Nagaland and Uttarakhand, the Department of Food & Public Distribution has enabled their integration with the existing 20 states/UTs for the National Portability, the ministry added.
With the addition of these four more states/UT, a total of 24 states/UTs are linked under the One Nation One Ration Card with effect from August 1, 2020, the ministry said.
The 24 States/UTs include five states from the Northeast region - Manipur, Mizoram, Nagaland, Sikkim, Tripura.
The other states under the national portability scheme are Andhra Pradesh, Bihar, Dadra & Nagar Haveli and Daman & Diu, Goa, Gujarat, Haryana, Himachal Pradesh, Jammu & Kashmir, Jharkhand, Karnataka, Kerala, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, Odisha, Punjab, Rajasthan, Telangana, Uttar Pradesh and Uttarakhand.
With this, about 65 crores (80%) of total NFSA population is now potentially enabled for receiving foodgrains anywhere in these States/UTs through national portability of ration cards. Remaining States/UTs are targeted to be integrated in the national portability by March 2021, the ministry said.
What is One Nation One Ration Card scheme?
The One Nation One Ration Card scheme is an ambitious plan of DoFPD to ensure delivery of food security entitlements to all beneficiaries covered under the National Food Security Act, 2013 (NFSA), irrespective of their physical location anywhere in the country, by implementing nationwide portability of ration cards under the ongoing central sector scheme on ‘Integrated Management of Public Distribution System (IM-PDS)’ in association with all states/UTs.
How to avail benefits of One Nation One Ration Card scheme?
Through this system, the migratory NFSA beneficiaries, who frequently change their place of dwelling in search of temporary employments, etc, are now enabled with an option to lift their entitled quota of food grains from any Fair Price Shop (FPS) of their choice anywhere in the country by using their same/existing ration card with biometric/Aadhaar based authentication on an electronic Point of Sale (ePoS) device installed at the FPSs.
