Migrants who travel across districts and states in search of seasonal and temporary employment are no longer deprived of their entitlement of subsidised foodgrain under the National Food Security Act (NFSA), thanks to portability of ration cards. Since its August 2019 launch, the One Nation One Ration Card (ONORC) scheme has helped millions of daily wagers, temporary workers in trade and industry, and domestic workers etc, to get foodgrain at heavily subsidised rates from the ration shops at their work centres.
Food ministry officials told FE that on an average, around 2.5 crore portability transactions are being recorded in a month across 35 states and Union Territories, which are part of the ONORC network. So far, more than 56 crore such transactions have taken place under ONORC, where 10 million tonne foodgrain has been delivered to migrants, involving a subsidy of Rs 31,000 crore.
At the same time, the families of the migratory beneficiaries back home continue to avail the balance ration entitled under NFSA.
The portability is supported by digitisation of all the 24 crore ration cards with Aadhaar seeding. Also, 96% of around 5.4 lakh fair price shops (FPSs) in the country have e-PoS machines installed. There are facilities of biometric and Aadhaar authentication of NFSA beneficiaries at the time of lifting the foodgrain through portability.
“Currently, close to 90% of monthly transactions under NFSA are biometrically authenticated,” Sudhanshu Pandey, secretary, Department of Food and Public Distribution, said.
Prior to the launch of ONORC, because of the defined coverage of beneficiaries under NFSA, it was difficult for migrant beneficiaries to get a new ration card issued at the place of their work. Thus, beneficiaries under NFSA used to be deprived of their food security benefits in the event of migration or being away from their villages and towns or designated FPSs.
Along with 10 digits of a ration card, two digits were appended to create unique member IDs of each beneficiary in a ration card.
As per estimates, 5-6 crore people migrate seasonally to various states in search of livelihood. Around 8 crore people are intra-state migrants, moving from one district to another in their home state.
At present, under ONORC around 77 crore beneficiaries out of around the 81 crore covered under NFSA can avail the ONORC portability facility. Only Assam is yet to join ONORC.
According to the food ministry, through digitalisation and Aadhaar seeding, 4.74 crore duplicate ration cards have been weeded out by states and UTs during 2013 to 2021.