To commemorate 75 Years of India's Independence as part of the ongoing ‘Azadi Ka Amrit Mahotsav’, this call for submission of Tagline/slogan for ‘One Nation One Ration Card’ (ONORC) plan is being issued by the Department of Food and Public Distribution, Ministry of Consumer Affairs, Food and Public Distribution, Government of India in partnership with United Nations World Food Programme.
As part of the “Prime Minister’s Technology-Driven System Reforms under the Atma Nirbhar Bharat Abhiyan, the One Nation One Ration Card (ONORC) plan for nation-wide portability of the ration cards under the National Food Security Act (NFSA) aims to empower all NFSA beneficiaries, particularly migrant beneficiaries, to become self-reliant (AtmaNirbhar) for their food-security anywhere in the country by allowing them to seamlessly access their PDS/NFSA foodgrains from any Fair Price Shop (FPS) of their choice anywhere in the country through their same/existing ration card.
In erstwhile Public Distribution System (PDS), where ration cards are typically tagged to nearby FPSs, the migrant beneficiaries, or households, often lose their access to subsidized NFSA food grains when they migrate to other places. Further, since the ration cards are tagged to particular FPSs and dealers have assured footfall of beneficiaries, this often adversely affected the quality of service and beneficiary satisfaction.
The ‘One Nation One Ration Card’ plan addresses the above difficulties and empowers all beneficiaries under NFSA, to seamlessly lift their foodgrains from any FPS of their choice. Operationally, the migrant beneficiaries desirous of lifting their foodgrains through portability may simply walk into any ePoS enabled FPS of choice in the ONORC enabled States/UTs and quote or present either their ration card number or seeded Aadhaar number to access their entitlements after biometric authentication on an ePoS device.
In August 2019 the ONORC was rolled out in the form of inter-State portability of ration cards in 4 States. Since then, progressively within a short span of time, the national portability of ration cards under One Nation One Ration Card plan is now seamlessly available in 32 States/UTs enabling about 69 Crore beneficiaries (86% NFSA population) to access their NFSA foodgrains anywhere in these States/UTs. Further, it is targeted to integrate the remaining 4 States/UTs (Delhi, Chhattisgarh, Assam, and West Bengal) with One Nation One Ration Card cluster soon, depending upon their achieving requisite technical readiness.
