-The Telegraph New Delhi: The Supreme Court today expressed serious concern over some states' insistence on aadhaar cards to extend social welfare schemes and other common services to citizens despite its two interim orders that the card should not be made mandatory until the court has decided its constitutional validity. A three-judge bench of Justices J. Chelameshwar, S.A. Bobde and C. Nagappan asked attorney-general Mukul Rohatgi to report to it by tomorrow...

-The Telegraph New Delhi: The Centre today urged the Supreme Court to vacate its two-year-old stay on making aadhaar cards mandatory for welfare benefits, praising the "tremendous success" of a programme Narendra Modi had trashed as a "scam" while in Opposition. Moving an application in the apex court, the government pleaded that the court stay was hobbling various social-sector programmes, including the direct benefit transfer schemes. It said that while beneficiaries' money was...

-Hindustan Times The government has cleared a Rs 950-crore plan to untangle the aadhaar-national population register jumble inherited from the UPA government. The census commissioner, tasked with creating NPR, will conduct a nationwide door-to-door survey over the next one year to link the population database with the 12-digit unique identification number, better known as aadhaar. Home minister Rajnath Singh approved the plan in June-end, sources said. At each stop, enumerators — who will...

-The Times of India MUMBAI: Often when there is a heavy traffic jam, cabbie Surya Prasad (name changed) turns to a friendly passenger, hands over a blank post card and requests him to write a few words in English addressed to his children residing back home in Khaspur village, near Patna. Even in today's era dominated by cell phones and email, millions of Indians continue to rely on postal services to reach...

-The Times of India NEW DELHI: Finance minister Arun Jaitley on Sunday said the direct transfer of cooking gas subsidies into the bank accounts of users will help the government cut its subsidy bill by around Rs 12,700 crore, or around a quarter of the funds spent last year. The minister used the successful transition to direct benefit transfer (DBT) system to argue for extending the scheme to other subsidies, something that...