New Delhi: The Centre has announced plans to roll out a ‘one nation, one ration card’ system which will aim to make sure that a beneficiary is able to avail herself of the Public Distribution System (PDS) – no matter which part of the country she may be in.
The measure, intended primarily to benefit migrant workers, will also help to cut down on corruption in public distribution by reducing beneficiaries’ dependence on particular shops in particular areas and also eliminating the practice of people holding more than one ration card so as to be able to draw rations from multiple shop or state.
The measure was made public by Union minister for consumer affairs, food and public distribution Ram Vilas Paswan, who chaired a meeting on Thursday to discuss the issue with food secretaries and other officials of state governments, representatives of the Food Corporation of India, the Central Warehousing Corporation and all the State Warehousing Corporations, reported Indian Express.
To Express, Paswan said that the plan hinged on the availability of point-of-sale (PoS) machines in all PDS shops. ‘PoS machines are available at all PDS shops in various states like Andhra Pradesh, Haryana and a few other others, but 100% availability is required to provide the benefit across the country,’ he said.
In a statement released by the food ministry in 2017, the purpose of installing electronic PoS devices was enumerated as ‘authentication of beneficiaries and electronic recording of subsidised foodgrain distribution to beneficiaries.’ The process aims to do away with manual recordings of transactions, thereby ensuring clarity of record keeping, says the government note.
In addition to equipping all shops with such machines, reports Times of India, the food ministry will create a central online database of all ration cards to prevent duplication.
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The database, known as the Integrated Management of PDS (IMPDS), will be updated each time a beneficiary avails herself of rations.
The food ministry has claimed that the system has made it possible for beneficiaries to access food from any district (and not just their assigned shop) in states like Andhra Pradesh, Gujarat, Haryana, Jharkhand, Karnataka, Kerala, Maharashtra, Rajasthan, Telangana and Tripura. All other states assured that they will implement the IMPDS soon at Thursday’s meeting with Paswan.
It is unclear as to whether under the new system new ration cards will now be issued by the Centre instead of state governments, which has traditionally issued ration cards. State governments issue distinctive ration cards to households under two groups – priority and Antyodaya (poorest of the poor) – according to the National Food Security Act, 2013. It is the state governments which also conduct periodical reviews of the system.
The Supreme Court has earlier ruled that an Aadhaar card is mandatory to avail oneself of government schemes and subsidies, however, confusion prevails over whether it is mandatory to link ration cards to Aadhaar cards. In April 2018, then Mumbai Congress president Sanjay Nirupam had alleged that the Bharatiya Janata Party-led Maharashtra government had ‘de-registered lakhs of ration cards not linked to Aadhaar.’