As part of the second tranche of announcements of the Rs 20 lakh crore Atma Nirbhar Bharat scheme, Finance minister nirmala sitharaman on thursday announced that the ‘One Nation, One Ration card’ scheme will be implemented across the country. Aimed at making ration accessible to migrant workers, the FM said that 67 crore beneficiaries across 23 states will be covered by the scheme by august 2020. The scheme is intended to make existing ration cards portable across the country so that migrants working in a different state can receive food grains from any fair-price shop (FPS) across the country, without having to get a new card.
Finance minister said in the press conference that by march 2021, there will be 100% coverage of the national portability of ration cards.The scheme was originally announced in june last year, and the government said at the time that eligible beneficiaries would be able to avail their entitled food grains under the National Food Security Act (NFSA) from any fair-price shop in the country. This scheme is aimed at benefiting migrant workers who often move states in search of employment and livelihood opportunities.
It also assumed significance at a time when thousands of migrant workers have begun returning to their home states due to lack of income, food and means of livelihood in the state where they are working with many of them walking home because of inadequate planning and delayed transport from the government. The government said at the time that it wants to implement the scheme across the country effective june 1, 2020. So far, 17 states have been integrated with the scheme. On january 1, 2020, andhra pradesh, goa, gujarat, haryana, jharkhand, karnataka, kerala, madhya pradesh, maharashtra, rajasthan, telangana and Tripura were integrated into the scheme, followed by bihar, up, punjab, himachal pradesh and daman and diu in May. For new cards issued in the standardised format, the Centre has asked states to issue it in a bi-lingual format, which would include the card-holder’s regional language and hindi or english as the other language.
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