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Ration scheme in all states soon: Centre
West Bengal, Chhattisgarh and Assam are yet to implement the programme now active in 32 states and Union territories while Delhi has implemented it partially.
The Union government’s One Nation One Ration Card (ONORC) digital platform that allows mobility of in-kind benefits, such as subsidised food, will “very soon” be implemented in the whole of the country, including in Delhi, Union food secretary Sudhanshu Pandey said on Monday.
West Bengal, Chhattisgarh and Assam are yet to implement the programme now active in 32 states and Union territories while Delhi has implemented it partially.
The ONORC programme is a digitised version of the country’s public distribution system (PDS) through which cheap grains are offered to about 739 million beneficiaries under the National Food Security Act, 2013.
The digitisation of the PDS, which is a network of nearly 500,000 fair-price shops, allows a beneficiary, such as a migrant worker, to access his/her share of subsidised ration from anywhere in the country regardless of the place where the ration card is registered to. In other words, it allows full mobility of food entitlements.
“Delhi will start the scheme very soon. Trials and testing are currently on,” Pandey said.
A Delhi government spokesperson did not comment.
The state government on June 11 informed the Supreme Court it commenced implementing the scheme.
West Bengal will soon complete the installation of necessary infrastructure to roll out the platform, an official said. Chhattisgarh, too, will complete the purchase of 4,000 e-PoS machines for its PDS system in July when it will be in a position to start the ONORC system. Assam has finished seeding 60% of Aadhaar information of beneficiaries for the rollout.
Experts say a digitised PDS system, while improving accountability, has been found wanting on many counts. “Data connectivity issues often lead to failures in authenticating biometrics,” said Dipa Sinha, who teaches in Ambedkar University.
