The Supreme Court said on June 11 that states and Union Territories must implement ‘One Nation One Ration Card’ (ONORC) scheme as it allows migrant workers to get ration at the place of their work in other states as well where their ration cards are not registered. 

The top court also took strong note of the delay in development of a software meant to register workers of unorganised sector to create a national database and posed queries to the Centre as to how the benefit of free food grain till November this year under the ‘Pradhan Mantri Garib Kalyan Yojana’ would reach to migrant labourers having no ration cards. 

Earlier on May 24, the top court had termed as very slow the process of registration of unorganised workers and had directed the authorities to provide dry ration and make operational community kitchens for migrant workers stranded throughout the country amid COVID-19 pandemic.

One Nation One Ration Card (ONORC) scheme

• With an objective to ensure food security of migratory beneficiaries, the government is implementing national portability of ration cards under National Food Security Act (NFSA), 2013 as part of an ambitious ‘One Nation One Ration Card’ (ONORC) plan to ensure seamless access to Public Distribution System (PDS) and delivery of food-security entitlements to all beneficiaries covered under the Act anywhere in the country in association with all state/UT governments. 

• Initially, this was started as interstate portability in August 2019 in four states of Andhra Pradesh & Telangana and Gujarat & Maharashtra.

• In January 2020, the facility of national portability of ration cards was seamlessly started in 12 states. 

• Since then, up to December 2020 the ONORC plan has been enabled in 32 states/UTs covering about 69 crore beneficiaries (nearly 86 per cent of NFSA population).

• The migratory beneficiaries/households in these states/UTs are now able to lift their entitled foodgrains from any ePoS (electronic Point of Sale device) enabled Fair Price Shop (FPS) of their choice anywhere in these states/UTs using their existing/same ration cards. 

• It is envisaged that nearly 8 crore migratory population may exist in the country. 

• To ensure seamless inter-state portability of a ration card, Aadhar seeding of all ration cards as well as biometric authentication of beneficiaries through automation of all FPS with installation of e-PoS devices are essential. 

• One Nation One Ration Card (impds.nic.in) portal is set up to monitor the national portability operations, transactions, distribution under ONORC plan in the integrated states/UTs.

• The main objective of the Integrated Management of Public Distribution System (IM-PDS) scheme is to implement nation-wide portability of benefits under NFSA by integrating the existing PDS systems/portals of states/UTs with the central systems/portals under central repository of all NFSA ration cards/beneficiaries. The creation of a central repository of all ration cards/beneficiary data of all states/UTs shall ensure that no duplicate ration card/beneficiary exists under NFSA.

• Also, One Nation One Ration Card mobile app has been developed. Besides migrant beneficiaries, this app can be used by all NFSA beneficiaries to get various information in respect of their ration cards, entitlements, nearby shops, registration for portability, etc on their mobiles. 

• During August 2019-December 2020, an average of 59 per cent portability transactions (including intra-state portability) have taken place against the expected volume of portability transactions in the country.

Manorama Yearbook app is now available on Google Play Store and iOS App Store