-The Hindu   The services will enable transfer, application procedures to be brought to one's door Last Christmas Eve, 35 people in a remote village of Jharkhand received a unique present. They became the first Indians to access their Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme bank accounts on their doorstep, having had their identities authenticated through their Aadhaar numbers. They are among the earliest beneficiaries of the next phase of the ambitious —...

-The Business Standard   Its guarantee of non-duplication can have far-reaching cost benefits but it has deep design flaws that can be compromised. PRAVEEN CHAKRAVARTY Former Volunteer, Financial Inclusion, UIDAI* “Aadhaar is an unadulterated identity programme that answers the question: Is the individual who he or she claims to be?”   The word “unique”, and not “identity”, is central to the unique identity programme or Aadhaar. It may be true that the vast majority of people possess some...

-The Business Standard   But there's work still to be done The government’s decision to geographically split India between two contending registry projects — the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) and the National Population Register (NPR) — is intended to save on the wastage that would result from duplicate data collection. Now they will use each other’s data, though duplication cannot be entirely avoided – as P Chidambaram, the Union home minister,...

Home ministry accepts UIDAI’s biometrics; in case of overlap, National Population Register will prevail The Aadhaar project, which has been in the eye of a storm for its dispute with the home ministry’s National Population Register (NPR), received a shot in the arm on Friday, with the Cabinet Committee on Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) extending its mandate to collect biometrics for a total of 600 million residents of the...

Further work likely to be done by an agency to be designated by Centre The curtains will come down on enrolments for Aadhaar, the Central government's ambitious unique identification programme, by February 15 at all 2,245 enrolment centres across Karnataka. A letter sent to Deputy Commissioners, in 23 districts where Aadhaar is being rolled out, by the State department of e-governance, informs them of the decision to stop enrolments, adding that “further...