JOIN US'One nation one ration card' scheme comes into effect in West Bengal
The West Bengal government has implemented the Modi-government’s ‘One nation one ration card scheme’, effective immediately.
The order came 2 says before the Supreme Court’s July 31 deadline for the scheme to be implemented in all states, The Indian Express reported.
Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee had earlier said that her ‘Khadya Sathi’ scheme was more effective and catered to more people than the Centre’s scheme.
"It has been decided by the Government of West Bengal to implement the ‘One Nation One Ration Card (ONORC)’ Plan under the scheme of Integrated Management of Public Distribution System (IM-PDS) that aims to implement nationwide portability in the distribution of subsidized food grains to eligible ration card holders under NFSA [National Food Security Act] who migrate or move across States or UTs in search of temporary employment or work or other reasons and gets deprived from accessing their quota of subsidized food grains, since the ration card is tagged to a particular FPS in home State or UT”, the state Food and Supplies Department stated in the order.
How does the scheme work?
Under this scheme, ration card holders under NSA can avail their share of subsidised food grains at any e-PoS enabled fair price shop once their ration card has been linked/verified with their Aadhar card. People under this scheme can avail their quota from anywhere in the country, explains the state food department.
All fair price shop (FPS) dealers have been urged to make the e-PoS online system available.
“To make the scheme successful, all FPS dealers, situated in West Bengal, are required to make available their e-PoS online at scheduled operational hours in all transaction days mandatorily. All food grain distribution should be done through online mode of e-PoS so that every transactional data should be stored in online server and NFSA beneficiaries going outside West Bengal and want to draw food grains from any FPSs outside West Bengal can draw the same without any hindrance. Besides, NFSA beneficiaries coming from outside West Bengal and intending to draw their entitled food grains from any FPSs of the State should be given the entitled quantity of food grain after successful Aadhaar based biometric authentication”, added the department.
“We have a huge number of migrant workers. Now, the state government realises that if the ‘One Nation One Ration Card’ scheme is not implemented then migrant workers will be deprived. So, we decided to implement it”, a senior government official told the publication.