Assam Becomes 36th State To Implement One Nation One Ration Card Scheme

Guwahati: Assam has become the 36th and final state to implement the One Nation One Ration Card (ONORC) scheme.

It happens to be a one-of-its-kind citizen Centric initiative in the country which aims to make food security portable throughout the country.

The programme, which was launched in August 2019, is swiftly implemented in a short span of time and it covers about 80 Crore beneficiaries.

The beneficiary-centric high-impact program intends to empower all the NFSA beneficiaries to become self-reliant for their food security anywhere in the country.

It will be done by making their existing ration cards portable, which will enable 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 the balance/required amount of food grains on the same ration card at their native/ any place from the FPS of their choice.

About 71 Crore portable transactions (43.6 crores NFSA and 27.8 crore PM-GKAY transactions) have taken place under the ONORC scheme since its inception in August 2019, delivering food grains equivalent to about Rs. 40,000 Crore in food subsidy through portability.

Portable transactions recorded during the COVID-19 period (from April 2020 till date) amounted to approximately Rs. 64 Crore. Foodgrains are equivalent to about Rs. 36,000 Crore were delivered in food subsidy through portability.

Out of these 64 crores, 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 foodgrains (Rice/Wheat) to NFSA beneficiaries to reduce the hardships caused by Covid.

In addition to it, a monthly average of about 3 Crore portable transactions are currently being recorded, delivering the subsidized NFSA and free PMGKAY food grains with anywhere flexibility to the beneficiaries.

Meanwhile, another aspect of the ONORC scheme is the 'MERA RATION' mobile application which has been launched in order to extract maximum advantage from the scheme.

The mobile app is providing a host of useful real-time information to the beneficiaries and is available in 13 languages.

The application has recorded more than 20 lakh downloads from the Google play store so far.

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