In order to facilitate the ‘One Nation-One Ration Card’ system in the country, the government Friday launched ‘Mera Ration’ mobile app to benefit citizens in identifying the nearest fair price shop. This app will benefit especially those ration card holders who move to new areas for livelihoods.
The app is developed by the government in association with NIC “to facilitate various ONORC related services among National Food Security Act (NFSA) beneficiaries, particularly migrant beneficiaries, FPS dealers and other relevant stakeholders,” the ministry said in a ststement.
Implementation of the One Nation-One Ration Card system ensures availability of ration to beneficiaries under the National Food Security Act (NFSA) and other welfare schemes, especially the migrant workers and their families, at any fair price shop (FPS) across the country.
On this occasion, while briefing the media, Sudhanshu Pandey, Secretary, Department of Food & Public Distribution, said that the ONORC, system which was started initially in 4 States in August 2019, has been swiftly rolled out in a very short span of time in 32 States/UTs by December 2020 and the integration of remaining 4 States/UT (Assam, Chhattisgarh, Delhi and West Bengal) is expected to be completed in next few months.
Pandey informed that at present, the system covers nearly 69 Crore NFSA beneficiaries (about 86% NFSA population) in the country and a monthly average of about 1.5~1.6 Crore portability transactions are being recorded under ONORC.
After the launch, Food Secretary Sudhanshu Pandey said the new mobile app aims to facilitate the ONORC-related services among beneficiaries of the NFSA, particularly migrant beneficiaries, fair price shop (FPS) or ration shop dealers and other stakeholders.
“We plan to have this mobile app in 14 languages. These languages are identified based on places where most migrant people move,” he said.
Some of the salient features of this application are:
-Beneficiaries can identify and locate the nearest fair price shop.
-Beneficiaries can easily check details of their:
-Foodgrain entitlement
-Recent transactions
-Status of Aadhaar seeding.
Moreover, migrant beneficiaries can register their migration details through the application. There is also an option for beneficiaries to enter suggestions/feedback.
The application is currently available in English and Hindi. The government also said that more functionalities will be added in the application with time to improve its utility and extend additional services.
Meanwhile, seventeen states have operationalised ‘One Nation-One Ration Card’ system with Uttarakhand being the latest to complete the reform, the finance ministry said on Thursday.
States completing the One Nation-One Ration Card system reform are eligible for additional borrowing of 0.25 percent of gross state domestic product (GSDP).
Accordingly, these states have been granted additional borrowing permission of ₹37,600 crore by the Department of Expenditure, the ministry said in a statement.
This technology-driven reform enables the migrant beneficiaries to get their entitled quota of food grains from any electronic point of sale (e-PoS) enabled fair price shops of their choice anywhere in the country.
In view of the resource requirement to meet multiple challenges posed by the COVID-19 pandemic, the Government of India had on May 17, 2020, enhanced the borrowing limit of the states by 2 per cent of their GSDP.
Half of this special dispensation (1 per cent of GSDP) was linked to undertaking citizen centric reforms by the states. The four citizen-centric areas for reforms identified by the Department of Expenditure were — implementation of One Nation-One Ration Card system; ease of doing business reform; urban local body and utility reforms; and power sector reforms.
The government supplies 5 kg of subsidised foodgrains to each person per month through 5.4 lakh ration shops.
