Minister of consumer affairs, food & public distribution, Ram Vilas Paswan met state food secretaries and state government officials along with officials of Food Corporation of India (FCI), Central Warehousing Corporation (CWC)
and State Warehousing Corporations (SWCs) in New Delhi.
and State Warehousing Corporations (SWCs) in New Delhi.
He discussed various issues pertaining to an efficient implementation of national food security act, end to end computerisation, transparency in storage and distribution of food grains and synergising of all FCI depots and CWC and SWC depots with the Depot Online System (DOS).
One of the key decisions taken in the meeting was moving towards One Nation One Ration Card (RC) which will ensure all beneficiaries especially migrants can access PDS across the nation from any PDS shop of their own choice. This will provide freedom to the beneficiaries as they will not be tied to any one PDS shop and reduce their dependence on shop owners and curtail instances of corruption.
The main objective of 'One Nation, One Ration Card’ is to ensure that no poor person is deprived of getting subsidised foodgrains under the food security scheme when they shift from one place to another. It also aims to remove the chance of anyone holding more than one ration card to avail benefits from different states.
It is to be noted that Integrated Management of PDS (IMPDS) is a system that is already operational in states like Andhra Pradesh, Gujarat, Haryana, Jharkhand, Karnataka, Kerala, Maharashtra, Rajasthan, Telangana and Tripura wherein a beneficiary can avail his share of food grain from any district in the state.
In the meeting, other states also assured that IMPDS will be implemented at the earliest. The Department of food and PD is working on war footing to achieve the objective of One Nation One Ration Card and in the next two months, beneficiaries of Telangana and Andhra Pradesh will be able to access the PDS shops.
The objective of the department is to ensure that this is implemented nationally in a time-bound manner. There will also be the creation of a Central Repository of all RCs which will help in de-duplication. Paswan asserted that the biggest beneficiary of this will be those migrant labourers who move to other states to seek better job opportunities and will ensure their food security.
Another key decision taken in the meeting was that FCI will provide an internet gateway for integrating DOS with state governments within four months. After that, within two months, states will integrate their Warehouse Management Systems with DOS. The Union Minister issued instructions to the officials of the Department of Food and PD to review the progress in four months and the next meeting in this regard will be held in January next year.
