The government's 'One Nation, One Ration Card' (ONORC) programme has been successfully implemented across the country, with Assam being the last state to operationalise the service. Under ONORC, beneficiaries covered under the National Food Security Act, 2013 (NFSA) can get their quota of subsidised foodgrains from any electronic point of sale device (ePoS)-enabled fair price shops of their choice by using their existing ration cards with biometric authentication.
Simply put, eligible people can get subsidised foodgrains from government shops smoothly.
According to the Food Ministry, ration card portability has significantly contributed in ensuring subsidised foodgrains to NFSA beneficiaries, especially migrant beneficiaries, during the last two years of Covid-19 pandemic.
Currently, a monthly average of about 3 crore portable transactions are being recorded, delivering the subsidised NFSA and free PMGKAY (Pradhan Mantri Garib Kalyan Anna Yojana) foodgrains with anywhere flexibility to the beneficiaries, it added.
The Centre has also rolled out the 'MERA RATION' mobile application, aiming to take maximum advantage of the ONORC plan.
The mobile app is providing a range 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 Google Play Store.
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