‘One Nation One Ration Card’ scheme in country soon: Danve

Tribune News Service

Amritsar, February 17

With an aim to further improve the Public Distribution System (PDS) at pan India basis, the Central Government is going to implement ‘One Nation One Ration Card’ scheme in the country soon, said Union Minister of State for Consumer Affairs, Food and Public Distribution Raosaheb Danve during a press conference here on Monday.

He said with the implementation of the scheme, any beneficiary would be allowed to get food security benefits from any PDS depot across the country. Rao said for the effective implementation of the scheme, 12 clusters had already been established across the country and the scheme would begin in the coming days.

The minister also held a meeting with officials of Food Supply and Consumer Affairs, Markfed, PUNSUP and Warehouse regarding wheat procurement. Talking about wheat procurement under the PDS, he said 332 lakh metric tonne of wheat was procured across the country, out of which about 129 lakh metric tonne was from Punjab. He said 416 lakh metric tonne of paddy was procured from across the country, out of which 113 lakh metric tonne was Punjab’s contribution.

As the wheat procurement season is just ahead, he said there were 100 lakh metric tonne of silos for wheat reserves across the country and the government’s goal was to produce 700 lakh metric tonnes of silos.

He said at present 92 places have been selected for storage of 33.5 lakh metric tonne of wheat in the state and work on them was underway. He revealed that till January 31, Punjab had a collection of 96 lakh metric tonnes of wheat which was being sent to Maharashtra so that the reservoirs could be emptied for new procurement. Rao claimed that country was self sufficient in food grains and in fact grain reserves were one and a half times more than the requirement.

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