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Source – The Indian Express

Synopsis – The Supreme Court order government to ensure quick and effective rollout of One Nation One Ration Card system.

Introduction –

The Supreme Court set a July 31 deadline for states to adopt the One Nation One Ration Card system and the Centre government to build a nationwide database of unorganized workers. The court also chastised the Centre for taking so long to build such a database, calling it unpardonable. The court’s verdict came in a suo motu case filed on May 26 of last year, which concerned the welfare of migrant workers affected by the Covid-19

One Nation One ration Card System [ONORC]-

Under the scheme, the beneficiaries of the National Food Security Act can access the subsidized food grains from any of the fair price shops across the country, not necessarily where the ration card is registered. To date, 32 states and union territories have joined the ONORC, bringing the total number of NFSA beneficiaries to 69 million.

However, appropriate implementation will only occur once the following considerations have been taken into account.

• Migrant portal – Setting up a portal to register migrant and unorganized workers, as they will get the benefit of the welfare programs only once they have been registered.
• Stock management– Food grain allocations across states will need to be more flexible in order to account for seasonal fluctuation in migration numbers.
  • To achieve successful inventory and stock management, the information technology infrastructure must be strong.
• Regular updation and a dynamic database system are needed so that migrant workers should be able to avail their entitlement irrespective of where they reside in the country.
• Use of ePOS [Electronic Point of Sale] at all the fair price shops as ONORC system identifies a beneficiary through biometric authentication on ePos devices at fair price shops.
• It is necessary to give facilities for linking ration cards with Aadhar cards throughout India in order to tackle the issue of ration card updation of household member data.

Way forward-

The government should implement ONORC as soon as possible and create a dynamic database for real-time information on migration across the country so that so that poor citizens and migrant workers get ration at the place of their work or where their ration cards are not registered.