-The Telegraph Guwahati: Apart from Tripura and Sikkim, enrolment for Aadhaar cards remains very low in the northeastern states, with Assam at the bottom of the list. According to figures available with the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI), which handles the Aadhaar project, as on November 30, 2014, the percentage of enrolment against the total population was abysmally low in Assam - 0.3 per cent. The trend is not much better in...

-The Hindu The imperatives of governance have a tendency to make political parties think differently once they are in power and revisit earlier misgivings. Nothing illustrates this better than the Narendra Modi government's decision to go ahead with the ‘Aadhaar' scheme aimed at giving unique identification numbers to residents. The Bharatiya Janata Party had on some occasions in the past voiced its reservations about the viability and desirability of the...

-The Hindu On most days, Central government staff work for eight hours The occasional surprise checks by Union Ministers to see if government employees are reporting to work on time may not have brought in 100 per cent compliance, but employees aren't as late to office as widely perceived. The Hindu got exclusive access to one week of Central government attendance data, thanks to the first publicly available database of employees, and found...

-The Indian Express Prime Minister Narendra Modi has directed the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) to ensure "universal coverage" under Aadhaar by June 2015. According to government officials, the PM set the deadline at a high-level meeting chaired by him in the first week of September. The target was reiterated in the minutes of the meeting circulated to all the concerned departments. Directions have also been issued to the Registrar General...

-The Business Standard PlanCom meets this month to hasten implementation; initial focus on target coverage might cover 300 districts After reposing faith in the Aadhaar project at its cabinet meeting last week, the Narendra Modi government wants Direct Benefits Transfer (DBT) to 80% of beneficiaries in five key schemes "as soon as possible". These include the cooking gas subsidy, where DBT was stalled under the previous government. The other schemes are on transfer...