Chennai: Assuring that any decision by the State government on the ‘one nation, one ration card,’ will not affect the Public Distribution System (PDS) being enforced in Tamil Nadu, Food Minister R. Kamaraj said the government will take into account the PDS mechanism in Tamil Nadu while making a decision on the proposal.
“Any decision on the one nation, one ration card proposal will not affect the existing PDS in the State,” Mr. Kamaraj said responding to a special call attention motion brought by the DMK in the Assembly on Tuesday.
Raising the issue, DMK member E. V. Velu said the BJP-led government’s proposal of one nation, one ration card system, under which beneficiaries can buy subsidised food grains from ration shops in any part of the country, was against federa-lism.
Meanwhile, in New Delhi, Union Consumer Affairs, Food and Public Distribution Minister Ram Vilas Paswan said the government would implement the scheme throughout the country from June 30, 2020. He said work on linking all the ration cards across the country with Aadhar cards and organising the food grain distribution mechanism in its entirety through Point of Sale (PoS) machine was in the final stage.
