Three more States and the Union Territory of Jammu and Kashmir will now offer the ‘one nation one ration card’ facility, Union Food Minister Ramvilas Paswan said on Saturday. With this, the facility was now available in 24 States benefitting 65 crore ration card holders, he said.
The ambitious ‘One Nation One Card’ scheme is to ensure that a ration card holder can collect the food grains that he or she is entitled to away from his/her home station too.
The three new States in the list are Manipur, Nagaland and Uttarakhand.
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“The One Nation One Card scheme gives people freedom of mobility, they are no longer tied down to one single fair price shop,” Mr. Paswan said. He added that by March 31, all States would be covered under the scheme and all the 81 crore beneficiaries would benefit. Once the scheme was fully implemented, the country would not see a repeat of the migrant worker crisis seen during the extended nationwide lockdown, he said.