It enables migrant ration-card-holders to lift their quota of grain entitlement from any fair price shop (FPS) in the country by using the ration card issued in their home states or Union Territory after biometric authentication on electronic Point of Sale (ePoS) devices installed at the FPS.’Since the launch of ONORC, 710 million portable transactions – 436 million under National Food Security Act (NFSA) and 278 million under Pradhan Mantri Garib Kalyana Anna (PMGKAY) transactions have taken place under ONORC. According to a food ministry statement on Tuesday, subsidised food grains worth Rs 40,000 crore is delivered to beneficiaries through portability.
A monthly average of about 30 million portable transactions are being recorded, delivering the subsidised NFSA and free PMGKAY foodgrains. As per estimates, 60 million people migrate seasonally to various states in search of livelihoods. Besides, around 80 million e people are intra-state migrants, moving from one district to another in their home state.
To ensure ration-card portability, the Centre had requested states to issue the ration card in the bi-lingual format—local language and Hindi or English. A 10-digit standard ration card number was assigned to beneficiaries, wherein the first two digits denotes the state code.Along with 10 digits, a set of another two digits was appended with the ration card number to create unique member IDs for each beneficiary in a ration card.
