The central government plans to launch a scheme, ‘One Nation One Ration Card’, which will allow the receiver to access Public Distribution System (PDS) benefits from any PDS shop across the country.
Union Minister for Consumer Affairs, Food and Public Distribution Ram Vilas Paswan chaired a meeting about this scheme on Thursday, 27 June with various other government agencies like Food Corporation of India (FCI), Central Warehousing Corporation (CWC) and State Warehousing Corporations (SWCs), reported The Indian Express.
The Integrated Management of PDS (IMPDS) scheme will be implemented by Ministry of Consumer Affairs, Food and Public Distribution, under which beneficiaries will not be tied to one PDS shop. They can avail their share of food grains from any district in Andhra Pradesh, Gujarat, Haryana, Jharkhand, Karnataka, Kerala, Maharashtra, Rajasthan, Telangana and Tripura.
In the meeting that took place on Thursday, the states provided assurances that they would implement IMPDS at the earliest. As this will depend on having PoS machines at each PDS centre, Paswan gave an update on the number of shops which have been automated already.
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