-PTI Aims to cover 53 cities across India at an estimated cost of Rs 300-400 crore New Delhi: The Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) plans to set up ‘Aadhaar Seva Kendras’, similar to the concept of Passport Seva Kendras, covering 53 cities across India at an estimated project cost of Rs 300-400 crore, official sources said. These proposed Aadhaar centres, meant to facilitate enrolment, updation and other activities, will be UIDAI’s own...

-The Hindu The benefits being projected in Aadhaar’s name are not backed by the data The first death anniversary of Santoshi Kumar, a Dalit girl from Simdega, Jharkhand, was this week. She died of hunger, at the age of 11, a few weeks after her family’s ration card was cancelled by the State government because they failed to link it to Aadhaar. The Aadhaar judgment of September 26 provided an opportunity for the...

-The Indian Express The Aadhaar judgment divides the people of this country into those receiving state assistance, and others. The former will get socio-economic rights if they do as they are asked to do. Privacy is a luxury they can ill afford. The signs were there from the beginning. The poor were part of the marketing strategy for promoting a project that would require people to enrol in a database that...

-The Indian Express Bill Gates’s claim that it raises no privacy concerns is misleading. Crucial issues that have to do with confidentiality of data and state surveillance are at stake. According to Bill Gates, privacy is not a concern with Aadhaar (‘Aadhaar doesn’t pose any privacy issue, says Bill Gates’, IE, May 3). This widely-quoted statement would have been more convincing if Gates had shown a clear understanding of the Aadhaar project....

-The Hindu Chief Justice Misra asks why people preferring anonymity are also compelled to part with their personal data to access services. The government has assured the Supreme Court that Aadhaar is not a “fly-by-night effort to score some brownie points” and personal data collected from millions of people is safe from breach in storage facilities barricaded behind five-feet thick walls. Appearing before a Constitution Bench led by Chief Justice of India Dipak...