The National Food Security Act Covers Up to 81.35 Crore Indians, About 80 Crore Receive Free Grain Through 5.51 Lakh Fair Price Shops, and Ration Cards Work in All 36 States and Union Territories

The National Food Security Act of 2013 entitles every person in a priority household to 5 kilograms of foodgrain a month and every Antyodaya household, the poorest group, to 35 kilograms a month. Since 1 January 2023 the Centre has supplied that grain free of cost, and the Department of Food and Public Distribution reported on 31 December 2025 that about 80 crore people were receiving it, against intended coverage of 81.35 crore.

The grain goes out through 5.51 lakh fair price shops, the licensed ration shops, and 5.50 lakh of them have electronic point-of-sale devices, according to the same review. Under One Nation One Ration Card, a card holder can collect the quota at any of those shops in the country, and the department counts more than 195.9 crore portability transactions since August 2019. Below are the legal entitlement, the dated counts, the digital system, the grain stocks and what named researchers measured, from documents up to 5 August 2026 and one stock report of 8 October 2026.

What the Act guarantees

Section 3 gives each person in a priority household 5 kg of foodgrain a month at subsidised prices, supplied by the state government through the Targeted Public Distribution System, the network of ration shops. Households under Antyodaya Anna Yojana, a scheme for the poorest families that began on 25 December 2000, are entitled to 35 kg per household. Schedule I set the price at no more than Rs 3 a kilogram for rice, Rs 2 for wheat and Re 1 for coarse grains for the first three years, and after that no more than the minimum support price, the rate at which the government buys from farmers. Section 3(2) limits coverage to up to 75 percent of the rural and up to 50 percent of the urban population.

The Act reaches beyond the ration shop. Pregnant women and lactating mothers are entitled to a free meal at the local anganwadi, the village child-care centre, during pregnancy and for six months after birth, and to a maternity benefit of not less than Rs 6,000. Children from six months to six years get a free meal at the anganwadi, and children from six to fourteen get a free midday meal at school. The eldest woman aged 18 or more in an eligible household is the head of the household for the ration card.

A person who is not supplied the entitled grain or meals can claim a food security allowance from the state government under Section 8, and each district has a grievance redressal officer under Section 15. Relief in British India’s famines of the 1870s ran on different rules, which the piece on the Deccan famine of 1876 to 1878 describes.

Who is covered, and how many have been identified

The department says the 75 and 50 percent limits come to about 81.35 crore people (813.5 million) on the 2011 Census. The Centre fixes each state’s share under Section 9, and the state identifies the households and issues the cards. A state-wise table the department gave Parliament on 10 February 2023 showed 80.11 crore people covered against 81.35 crore accepted, or 98.47 percent. Bihar had covered all of its 8.71 crore, and Uttar Pradesh 14.98 crore of 15.21 crore.

The later figures are dated. The 31 December 2025 review reports details of 20.55 crore ration cards, covering around 79.8 crore beneficiaries, on state transparency portals. In a written reply in Parliament on 5 August 2026, the Minister of State said states and union territories had identified 790.8 million persons by 8 July 2026, leaving scope to identify 22.7 million more within the 813.5 million limit. Business Standard reports the reply as saying that adding eligible people and deleting ineligible ones is a continuing process.

The Minister of Consumer Affairs, Food and Public Distribution told the Rajya Sabha on 4 August 2026 that 81 crore people are getting free grain under the Pradhan Mantri Garib Kalyan Anna Yojana, according to News On AIR. The 81 crore and the 79.08 crore appear in different statements, and the sources cited here do not reconcile them.

From Rs 3, 2 and 1 to free grain

The Pradhan Mantri Garib Kalyan Anna Yojana (PMGKAY) began as Covid relief in April 2020. Its seven phases allocated about 1,118 lakh tonnes of foodgrain over 28 months, at a planned outlay of about Rs 3.91 lakh crore, the 2025 review says. From 1 January 2023 the Centre made the grain under the Act itself free of cost, and on 29 November 2023 the Cabinet approved free rice, wheat and coarse grains (millets, covered in the piece on the International Year of Millets) for five years from 1 January 2024, at an estimated Rs 11.80 lakh crore. Business Standard describes the free grain under the Act as now carried under the PMGKAY name.

For 2025-26 the department allocated 554.99 lakh tonnes of grain under the Act’s public distribution system, including 99.42 lakh tonnes for Antyodaya households and 429.48 lakh tonnes for priority households. The 2026-27 Budget provides Rs 2,27,429 crore for PMGKAY, which PRS calculates as 97 percent of the department’s Rs 2,35,047 crore.

Shops, devices and Aadhaar

Section 12 of the Act listed the reforms it wanted, among them doorstep delivery of grain, computerised records and Aadhaar-based identification with biometrics. The 2025 review reports that all ration card and beneficiary data are digitised in every state and union territory, that over 99.9 percent of cards have at least one member linked to Aadhaar (the 12-digit ID system described here), and that more than 98 percent of grain transactions are recorded as biometrically or Aadhaar authenticated. PRS gives 99 percent as of December 2025 and names Arunachal Pradesh (81 percent) and Meghalaya (78 percent) as the states behind. It also records that 6.77 crore ration cards had been deleted by December 2025, and notes the 15th Finance Commission’s list of reasons for earlier deletions: ghost, duplicate and ineligible cards, deaths and migration.

The department launched ASHA, a grievance platform under the IndiaAI Mission that collects feedback by WhatsApp and voice calls in several languages through the Bhashini translation service. In a Lok Sabha reply of 5 August 2026 it listed the ways a card holder can authenticate: single finger, fusion finger, iris and Aadhaar-based one-time password. If one member’s fingerprint fails, other members on the card can authenticate, a nominee can collect in exceptional cases, and the devices can work offline. The reply says all states have been told that no genuine beneficiary is to be denied the quota for a failed authentication.

One Nation One Ration Card

Under One Nation One Ration Card (ONORC), a household uses its existing card at any fair price shop in the country, with a biometric check on the shop’s device. The department says the plan started in four states in August 2019, and a Lok Sabha reply of 20 December 2023 reported it implemented in all 36 states and union territories. The 2025 review puts the beneficiaries covered at about 79.8 crore. That December 2023 reply counted around 124 crore portability transactions, covering both inter-state and intra-state use.

The 2025 review gives more than 195.9 crore transactions since August 2019, delivering more than 464.7 lakh tonnes of grain. In the first ten months of 2025 there were about 32.6 crore transactions and about 64 lakh tonnes, and more than 3.2 crore a month are now recorded. The December 2023 reply calls the plan especially beneficial to migrant workers, and says family members at home can collect the balance of the same card.

The grain in store

The grain comes from the Food Corporation of India (FCI) and state agencies, which buy at the minimum support price. In the 2025-26 rabi season they procured 300.35 lakh tonnes of wheat from 25.13 lakh farmers, and in the 2024-25 kharif season 832.17 lakh tonnes of paddy from about 1.19 crore farmers, the 2025 review says.

Business Today, citing government data, reports Central Pool stocks of wheat and rice at 925.85 lakh tonnes on 1 July 2026 against a stocking norm of 411.20 lakh tonnes, and 870.45 lakh tonnes on 1 September 2026. PRS says wheat stocks were about two times the norm and rice about four times on 1 January 2026, and that the Comptroller and Auditor General found average stocks almost twice the requirement between 2017-18 and 2022-23. In 2024-25 the FCI’s cost of supplying grain was Rs 28.5 a kilogram for wheat and Rs 40.4 for rice, and 92 percent of wheat procurement came from Punjab, Haryana and Madhya Pradesh.

What independent studies measured

Researchers define leakage as the share of grain released by the FCI that does not reach households, and estimate it by matching household surveys against FCI offtake. Jean Drèze and Reetika Khera wrote in the Economic and Political Weekly in February 2015 that it fell from 54 percent in 2004-05 to 42 percent in 2011-12 on National Sample Survey data, and from 49 to 32 percent on India Human Development Survey data.

Khera wrote on Ideas for India in October 2024 that household consumption survey data put leakage at 22 percent in 2022-23. She reports that the share of households buying from the system rose from 39 percent in 2011-12 to 70 percent in 2022-23, and reads this as largely the result of the Act’s rollout. She also notes that Bihar’s leakage fell from 91 to 24 percent and Chhattisgarh’s from 52 to 9 percent between 2004-05 and 2011-12, the state experience in the Chhattisgarh profile. Prabhu Pingali and Raghav Puri estimated 24.1 percent for 2022-23 and 8.8 percent for 2023-24, and say negative estimates in five states raise doubts about the reliability of recent figures. They cite a 28 percent estimate by Das and co-authors for 2022-23.

Karthik Muralidharan, Paul Niehaus and Sandip Sukhtankar studied Aadhaar-based biometric checks in Jharkhand’s ration system, as Drèze, Khera and Somanchi describe it. Their working paper for the National Bureau of Economic Research reported that corruption fell but that 1.5 to 2 million legitimate beneficiaries lost access to benefits at some point during the reforms. The authors attribute the losses mainly to how the transition was managed. Drèze, Khera and Anmol Somanchi write that their own earlier Jharkhand study found compulsory checks alone caused “pain without gain”. They add that Jharkhand’s leakage, estimated at 80 to 85 percent from survey rounds between 2001-02 and 2007-08, was about 20 percent in the control areas of the Muralidharan trial by early 2017.

What the next stage covers

Section 9 ties each state’s number to the latest published Census, and the coverage fixed in 2013 has not been revised. PRS reports that the department said in August 2025 that coverage can change only after the next Census data is published, and that the Census is set for 2027. Drèze said in 2025 that National Commission on Population projections imply a little over 920 million people would need coverage, against around 800 million on 2011 figures, according to Newslaundry and IndiaSpend.

The department invited comments until 13 July 2026 on a draft National Food Security (Amendment) Bill, 2026. It would give each person in an Antyodaya household 7 kg a month, with a ceiling of 35 kg per household. The notice says the present household quota gives smaller households more grain per person than larger ones. Down To Earth calculated that a family of six would be held at 35 kg, a little under 6 kg a head, and reported that Anuradha Talwar, an adviser to the Supreme Court’s food commissioners in West Bengal, called 250 grams a day too little, and that the economist Dipa Sinha wants pulses and edible oil added. The minister told the Rajya Sabha on 4 August 2026 that no state or beneficiary would see a reduction, and that comments on the draft had been invited from state governments.