According to an article published in Livemint, the scheme has its origins in 2011, when a task force was founded by then Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee. Chaired by Nandan Nilekani, the job of the task force was to figure out how to initiate direct cash transfers of subsidies. Eventually, the task assigned to the force was expanded to including the formulation of an IT system for the PDS and the findings were submitted in October 2011.
Since, then, ONORC has been in the works for over a decade.
The ONORC was envisioned to amplify access to PDS benefits for the NFSA beneficiaries, by allowing them to avail the benefits even outside the jurisdiction of the FPS they were originally assigned.
As per The Indian Express, even though the ONORC was officially launched in August 2019, work on ration card portability had begun in April 2018 itself. That was when the IM-PDS was launched.
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