Eligible individuals can easily purchase subsidised foodgrains from government stores.
The "One Nation, One Ration Card" (ONORC) programme of the government has been successfully implemented throughout the nation, with Assam being the last state to make the service operational. Beneficiaries protected by the National Food Security Act of 2013 (NFSA) can use their current ration cards with biometric verification to purchase their allotted amount of subsidised foodgrains from any electronic point of sale device (ePoS)-enabled fair price shops of their choosing under ONORC.
Simply put, eligible individuals can easily purchase subsidised foodgrains from government stores.
The Food Ministry claims that during the latter two years of the Covid-19 pandemic, ration card portability greatly helped ensure that subsidised foodgrains were provided to NFSA members, particularly migrant beneficiaries.
Currently, the beneficiaries of the free PMGKAY (Pradhan Mantri Garib Kalyan Anna Yojana) and the subsidised NFSA (National Food Security Act) are receiving an average of 3 crore portable transactions per month, it was said.
To fully utilise the ONORC strategy, the Center has also released the mobile application "MERA RATION."
The smartphone app, available in 13 languages, offers the users a variety of practical real-time information.
More than 20 lakh people have downloaded the app from the Google Play Store.
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