The Department of Food and Public Distribution (DFPD) received the prestigious Prime Minister’s Award for Excellence in Public Administration, 2020 for its scheme ‘One Nation One Ration Card’ (ONORC). Hon. Prime Minister Shri Narendra Modi conferred the Prime Minister’s Awards for Excellence in Public Administration on the occasion of 15^th Civil Services Day in New Delhi on 21.04.2022. The award was presented under the category Innovation (General)-Central.

The landmark plan of ONORC is a countrywide innovation that allows all NFSA beneficiaries, particularly migrant beneficiaries, to claim either full or part foodgrains from any Fair Price Shop (FPS) of choice in the country through existing ration card with biometric/Aadhaar authentication in a seamless manner. The system also allows their family members back home, if any, to claim the balance of foodgrains on same the ration card.

(Secretary Sudhanshu Pandey (2nd from left), Joint Secretary S. Jagannathan (centre), and other officials of the Department of Food and Public Distribution, with the PM Award Trophy and Scroll-  2020.)

The Department is also collaborating with other Ministries/Departments i.e. National Health Authority (NHA), Ministry of Housing and Urban Development (MoHUA), Ministry of Labour and Employment (MoLE), and Department of Agriculture and Farmer Welfare (DoAFW), etc. to leverage the large volume of the ONORC database for deepening the outreach of citizen-centric government schemes across the country.

The ONORC which was started initially in 4 States in August 2019 was swiftly rolled out in a very short span of time in 32 States/UTs by December 2020. Since then, progressively in a phase-wise manner, the ONROC plan is presently enabled in 35 States/UTs up to Feb 2022 seamlessly covering nearly 77 Crore beneficiaries (almost 96.8% of NFSA population) in the country.

ONORC has made food subsidies portable to NFSA beneficiaries during the COVID-19 pandemic, particularly migrants, which allowed them to avail the benefit of subsidised foodgrains with flexibility from any of the nearly 5 lakh Fair Price Shops in the country during the lockdown period. Since the inception of the ONORC plan in August 2019, so far more than 65 Crore portability transactions have been recorded in the States/UTs, delivering nearly 121 LMT foodgrains through both inter-State and intra-State portability transactions equivalent to about Rs. 36,000 Crore in food subsidy. As a key indicator, presently a monthly average of about 2.7 Crore portability transactions (including regular NFSA and PM-GKAY foodgrain transactions) are being recorded in the States/UTs under ONORC. A high volume of about 58 Crore portability transactions has been done by the beneficiaries during the COVID-19 period (from April 2020 till date).

A specially customized Android Mobile App on ONORC is also available in 13 languages and has been downloaded nearly 20 lakh times. Besides, a 5-digit ‘14445’ toll-free number for migrant NFSA beneficiaries is also available in most States/UTs under ONORC.

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AM/NS