Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman announced the national rollout of a "One Nation, One Ration Card" system in all states and Union Territories by March 2021. Under the system migrant workers and their family members will be able to access PDS benefits from any Fair Price Shop in the country.





About 23 crore ration cards have been issued to nearly 80 crore beneficiaries of National Food Security Act, 2013 (NFSA) in all states and UTs. In present system, these beneficiaries can buy foodgrains only from an Fair Price Shop (FPS) that has been assigned to him in the locality in which he lives.

The new system will identify and enable a beneficiary to purchase NFSA entitled foodgrains through biometric authentication on electronic Point of Sale (ePoS) devices installed at the Fair Price Shops.

Under the scheme the intra-state as well as inter-state portability of ration cards to enable a migrant worker to buy foodgrains from any FPS across the country is supported by the Integrated Management of Public Distribution System (IM-PDS) portal (http://www.impds.nic.in).

The data of distribution of foodgrains through E-PoS devices within a state is hosted by an another portal named Annavitran (annavitran.nic.in). It enables a person to buy her share of foodgrains within the state wherever she is based, the rest of her family members can purchase subsidised foodgrains from their ration dealer back home.

The work of "One Nation, One Ration Card System" was started two years back with the launch of Integrated Management of Public Distribution System (IM-PDS) in April 2018. The IM-PDS scheme was launched by seeding the ration cards with Aadhaar to curb leakages and reform the public distribution system in the country.
So far, ration card portability has been enabled in 17 states and UTs. Further, constant efforts are being made by the Food Ministry to expand the reach of the scheme to the beneficiaries of other states and UTs.