Assam Becomes 36th State to Implement One Nation One Ration Card

Assam has become the 36th State/UT to implement One Nation One Ration Card (ONORC). With this, the ONORC plan is successfully implemented in all 36 states/UTs, making food security portable throughout the country. During the last two years of the COVID-19 pandemic, the ONORC plan has significantly contributed to ensuring subsidized food grains to NFSA (National Food Security Act) beneficiaries, especially migrant beneficiaries.

This is a 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 the portability of their existing ration cards enabling them to seamlessly lift their entitled subsidized food grains (in part or full) from any Fair Price Shop of their choice.

This also enables their family members to lift the balance/required amount of food grains 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 the COVID-19 period itself (from April 2020 till date) delivering food grains 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 the distribution of additional free-of-cost food grains (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 subsidized NFSA and free PMGKAY food grains with anywhere flexibility to the beneficiaries.

Another dimension under the 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 the Google play store.