What is in news : The Supreme Court directed all states and Union Territories to implement the One Nation, One Ration Card (ONORC) system, which allows for inter- and intra-state portability, by July 31.

• Aim à enabling migrant workers and their family members to buy subsidised ration from any fair price shop anywhere in the country under the National Food Security Act, 2013.
• The union government has provided incentives to states.
• The Centre had even set the implementation of ONORC as a precondition for additional borrowing by states during the Covid-19 pandemic last year.

Technical features:

• ONORC is based on technology that involves details of beneficiaries’ ration card, Aadhaar number, and electronic Points of Sale (ePoS).
• The system identifies a beneficiary through biometric authentication on ePoS devices at fair price shops.
• The system runs with the support of two portals —Integrated Management of Public Distribution System (IM-PDS) (impds.nic.in) and Annavitran (annavitran.nic.in), which host all the relevant data.

Till date, 32 states and Union Territories have joined the ONORC, covering about 69 crore NFSA beneficiaries.

Four states are yet to join the scheme — Assam, Chhattisgarh, Delhi and West Bengal.