Antyodaya Anna Yojana is a Government of India

sponsored scheme to provide highly subsidised food to

millions of the poorest families. This scheme was brain-
child of then Union Food and Civil Supplies minister,
Shanta Kumar. It was launched by the NDA government
on 25 December 2000 and first implemented in the Indian
state of Rajasthan.
After identifying the "poorest of the poor" (the 10,000,000
poorest families in the Below Poverty Line category)
through extensive surveying,[1] the government began
providing them an opportunity to purchase up to
35kilograms of rice and wheat at a highly subsidised cost
of ₹3 per kilogram of rice and ₹2 per kilogram of wheat.
Poor families were identified by their respective state rural
development facilities through the use of surveys. The
scheme has been expanded twice, once in June 2003 and
then in August 2004, adding an additional 5,000,000 BPL
families each time and bringing the total number of
families covered up to 20,000,000.[citation needed] after this
additional 50 lakh families were added in 2003 .
Ration cards[edit]
Once a family has been recognized as eligible, they are
given a unique "Antyodaya Ration Card." This card, also
called the PDS yellow card, acts as a form of identification,
proving that the bearer is authorized to receive the level of
rations the card describes. The color of the card is green