-The Economic Times The Direct Benefits Transfer (DBT) scheme commenced with the initial rollout in 20 districts covering seven scholarship schemes. Another 23 districts will be covered by March this year. The intention is to link all government benefits to aadhaar-based identification of beneficiaries and to channelise the cash benefits through aadhaar-enabled bank accounts. Irrespective of the merits of translating some benefits delivered in kind like in PDS into their cash-equivalent, for...

-PTI Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit on Friday set a deadline of March 31 for completing issuance of aadhaar number to people in the city so that all major welfare schemes could be linked to it soon. Dikshit issued the direction at a high-level meeting which reviewed the implementation of direct cash transfer schemes of the central government that was rolled out in two districts of the city last month. As per official...

-Live Mint In Parliament address, Mukherjee says direct cash transfers will cut leakages and bring benefits to the poorest Acknowledging that growing aspirations, particularly among the youth, are going largely unmet, the government has signalled a policy makeover, including undertaking “difficult decisions”. The Congress-led United Progressive Alliance (UPA) also indicated that it was looking to the direct benefit transfer scheme based on the aadhaar or unique identity system to restore the feel-good factor...

-The Business Standard Varad Pande, officer on special duty, ministry of rural development, says the aadhaar identification project aims to cover at least half of country’s population by next year. He talks about where it has reached, in an interview with Samie Modak & Abhineet Kumar. Edited excerpts: * What is the aadhaar project’s status? The project started about two years earlier and now has a little more than 270 million enrolled, roughly...

-Counter Currents The aadhaar scheme of the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) is to provide India's billion-plus people with a unique identification number. Enrolling into the scheme was and still is not mandatory, though it was mentioned that it would be difficult for people to access public services in the absence of enrolment. The scheme requires individuals to provide their photograph, fingerprints and iris scan together with documentary personal information,...