One Nation One Ration Card (ONORC)

A migrant worker who moves states used to lose access to subsidised food, unless they returned home to collect it. One scheme quietly fixed that, for nearly 80 crore people.

IndEco0226

9 AUG 2019

Pilot Launched

4 states: Andhra Pradesh, Telangana, Gujarat, Maharashtra

1 JAN 2020

12 More States Join

Nationwide rollout accelerates

JUN 2022

Full National Coverage

Assam joins as the 36th and final State/UT

2024

158.8 Crore Transactions

315.8 lakh tonnes of food grains delivered, cumulatively

Built for migrants, used mostly at home: ONORC connects all 36 States and UTs, but under 1% of its transactions actually cross a state line.

⇩ Download as image

📑 Contents

1Timeline
2Must Know
3Good to Know
4Test Yourself
5Great to Know
6Current Affairs

Timeline

9 August 2019: One Nation One Ration Card (ONORC) was launched as a pilot, in four states: Andhra Pradesh, Telangana, Gujarat, and Maharashtra.
1 January 2020: Twelve more states and UTs joined the scheme, accelerating its nationwide rollout.
31 July 2021: The Supreme Court directed all remaining States and UTs to implement ONORC, citing food security for migrant workers.
June 2022: Assam became the 36th and final State or UT to join, completing ONORC’s pan-India rollout.

Must Know

ONORC lets any beneficiary under the National Food Security Act (NFSA), 2013, claim food grains from any Fair Price Shop (FPS) in India. This works even if it isn’t the shop where their ration card was originally registered.
It was launched on 9 August 2019, as a pilot in four states. It reached full national coverage, across all 36 States and UTs, by June 2022.
The scheme is run by the Department of Food and Public Distribution (DFPD), under the Ministry of Consumer Affairs, Food and Public Distribution.
It works through Aadhaar-linked biometric authentication, on electronic Point of Sale (ePoS) devices installed at Fair Price Shops.
ONORC covers roughly 81.35 crore NFSA beneficiaries, close to two-thirds of India’s population.
The Mera Ration mobile app, available in 13 languages, helps beneficiaries find nearby Fair Price Shops and check their entitlements. A redesigned Mera Ration 2.0 followed later, with added features for migrant workers.
Since January 2023, NFSA food grains have been provided free of cost, under the Pradhan Mantri Garib Kalyan Anna Yojana (PMGKAY). This replaced the earlier subsidised pricing of ₹2-3 per kg. The free-foodgrain provision was extended for five more years, from January 2024.

Good to Know

ONORC runs on two portals. The IM-PDS portal manages inter-state portability transactions, while Annavitran manages intra-state ones, within the same state.
As of 2024, about 99.8% of India’s 5.43 lakh Fair Price Shops had ePoS devices installed. Over 97% of PDS transactions were biometrically or Aadhaar-authenticated.
The entire ONORC reform, connecting 36 States and UTs onto one national platform, was built for just ₹127 crore, over four years. That makes it an unusually low-cost digital reform, for its scale.
ONORC sits on top of India’s existing Public Distribution System (PDS). It adds portability to that system, rather than replacing it. See IndEco0030 — Public Distribution System and Food Security for how PDS itself works, including its 2026 rice-quality reforms.
ONORC transactions surged during the COVID-19 pandemic. Between April 2020 and September 2021 alone, around 24.32 crore portability transactions took place. Most benefited migrant workers, stranded away from their home states during lockdowns.

Test Yourself

Great to Know

ONORC’s headline transaction numbers hide an important gap. Only about 0.7% of its transactions are inter-state, the exact use case migrant workers need most. The remaining 99.3% happen within the same state.
One reason: Fair Price Shop dealers in destination states are often reluctant to serve interstate migrants. Stock allocation and subsidy reconciliation, across two different states, creates financial uncertainty for local dealers.
Other barriers include biometric authentication failures, common among elderly and manual-labour beneficiaries with worn fingerprints. Low awareness is another factor: many migrant workers don’t know their ration card even works outside their home state.
This reveals a real gap. ONORC’s design intent was food security that travels with migrants, across state lines. In practice, it is used mostly by people accessing rations within their own state.

Current Affairs

Since its 2019 launch, ONORC has recorded more than 158.8 crore portability transactions, delivering over 315.8 lakh metric tonnes of food grains. (Source: PIB, Year-End Review 2024, Dept. of Food and Public Distribution)
The scheme now averages over 2.5 crore portability transactions every month. In the first eleven months of 2024 alone, it recorded around 30 crore transactions, delivering close to 66 lakh metric tonnes of food grains. (Source: PIB, Year-End Review 2024, Dept. of Food and Public Distribution)
An earlier, directly-verified government figure put cumulative transactions at 93.31 crore, as of 30 November 2022, in a written Lok Sabha reply. (Source: PIB)