NEWS

The Department of Food and Public Distribution (DFPD) gets Prime Minister’s Award for Excellence in Public Administration, 2020 for the ‘One Nation One Ration Card’ scheme

THE SCHEME

• Aimed at 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.
• To promote this reform in the archaic Public Distribution System (PDS), the government has provided incentives to states.

HOW DOES ONORC WORK?

• Based on technology that involves details of beneficiaries’ ration card, Aadhaar number, and electronic Points of Sale (ePoS)
• Identifies a beneficiary through biometric authentication on ePoS devices at fair price shops
• 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.
• When a ration card holder goes to a fair price shop, he or she identifies himself or herself through biometric authentication on ePoS, which is matched real time with details on the Annavitaran portal. Once the ration card details are verified, the dealer hands out the beneficiary’s entitlements.
• While the Annavitaran portal maintains a record of intra-state transactions — inter-district and intra-district — the IM-PDS portal records the inter-state transactions