One Nation One Ration Card Scheme | 04 Sep 2019
With effect from 1st October 2019, two new clusters, Kerala and Karnataka and Rajasthan and Haryana, will join the initiative of inter-state portability of ration cards.
- It implies that people from a state will be able to buy subsidised food from ration shops in the neighbouring state.
- At present, a pair of Andhra Pradesh and Telangana, as well as of that Maharashtra and Gujarat are part of the initiative.
- Through this initiative, the government is laying out the roadmap for the One Nation One Ration Card system, which it hopes to implement by June 2020.
- One Nation One Ration Card Scheme will allow portability of food security benefits across the country.
- By 1st January 2020, the Centre hopes that the eight states in these initial experimental clusters, as well as Jharkhand, Punjab and Tripura, can be clubbed into a single grid.
- This means that migrants from these 11 States can access their rations guaranteed under the National Food Security Act (NFSA) in any of the other State within the grid.
- These 11 States have already achieved the first step of implementing intra-State portability, where NFSA beneficiaries can use their ration cards in any ration shop within their own state, not just the shop where the card is registered.