One Nation One Ration Card (ONORC) Scheme: About, Advantages,

One Nation One ration Card Scheme

On June 27, 2019 One Nation One Ration Card(ONORC) scheme was launched by Mr. Ram Vilas Paswan, the minister of consumer affairs, food and public distribution.

Once implemented, would enable beneficiaries to get their benefits or grains from any Ration shop of their choice across the country.

This scheme will ensure the portability of food security benefits, means a person can avail all benefits provided by Public Distribution System(PDS) across the country for which he is entitled provided, Aadhaar card of beneficiary is linked with the Ration card.

Scheme is expected to be implemented in whole country by July 1, 2020.

The government has started inter-state portability in 4 states clubbed into two clusters.One is Telangana and Andhra Pradesh and other is Gujarat and Maharashtra.

The government has also envisaged to joint 4 more states(Kerala & Karnataka as well as Rajasthan & Punjab) into the same scheme. with effect from October 1, people from these states can buy grains in above mentioned states. and by january 1, 2020, Jharkhand, Punjab and Tripura will be added to the scheme in a single grid.

All 11 states (Andhra Pradesh, Telangana, Maharashtra, Gujarat, Kerala, Karnataka, Rajasthan, Haryana, Punjab, Jharkhand and Tripura) have already implemented intra-state (with in same state) portability of ration card where NFSA beneficiaries can avail PDS benefits from any fair price shop or ration shop with their state. Many people have taken advantage of this scheme and when asked from these people why did they use other ration shop than prescribed one, Misbehavior of dealer at ration shop is the main issue.

In all these 11 state, all ration shop have electrified point of sell(POS) machines.

Advantages of the scheme: 

1. This scheme would be very beneficial for all internal poor migrants who move to any part of country. After introduction of this scheme, a person can buy grains at his place/Location.
2. This scheme will be very useful for plugging leakage and curbing corruption because by using technology government has already started de-duplication of Ration cards or making duplicate Ration cards invalid. In last 5 years, government has deleted approximately 3 crore ration cards.
3. By using modern technology, Government can rightly target beneficiaries to provide them their benefits.
4. This scheme would be useful for improving Nutrition Value of poor people because people at their working place or location can save money by procuring grains from Ration shop and this saved money can be used to add nutrition into their diet.  
5.  It would add a step toward Integration of country. it can be understood by, suppose a person went to some other part of India, if he could buy grains or other benefits provided by the PDS on the same price from ration shop. It will give a feeling that the person in not recriminated on the basis of region.

Mr. Ravikant, secretary, food and public distribution said that measure have been taken to prevent misuse of portability system. "Government will allow only partial lifting of rations at a time, max 50% can be picked up at a time ," he said. This would prevent one member of household to take whole ration at one location and depriving others from taking benefits who use same ration card.

At present, Government supplied 5kg subsidized food grain to each person per month to more than 81 crore people through 500000 ration shops in country, which costs approximately 1.4 lakh crore annually.

Food grain via ration shop are supplied at highly subsidized rate of ₹ 3/kg for rice ₹ 2/kg for wheat through PDS.