Assam becomes 36th state to implement One Nation One Card; food security portable across state

Assam has become the 36th state or territory to adopt the One Nation One Ration Card system (ONORC). As a result, the ONORC plan has been successfully implemented in all 36 states/UTs, ensuring food security across the country.

During the last two years of COVID-19 pandemic, ONORC plan has significantly contributed in ensuring subsidized foodgrains to NFSA (National Food Security Act) beneficiaries, especially migrant beneficiaries. This is one-of-its-kind Citizen Centric initiative in the country, which is swiftly implemented in a short-span of time covering about 80 Crore beneficiaries, after being initiated in August 2019.

The objective of this beneficiary centric high-impact program 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 subsidized foodgrains (in part or full) from any Fair Price Shop of their choice. This also enables their family members to lift balance/required amount of foodgrains on the same ration card at their native/ any place from the FPS of their choice.

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.