-The Economic Times KOLKATA: In a first such move, West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee instructed state government officials to stop sharing data with the central government. In an administrative meeting in South 24 Paragana district on Thursday, Banerjee said that the state departments would have its own portals and store data on its own. She said that the NDA government accesses all data of the state government and uses those to...

-India Today The ECI plan to link voter IDs to Aadhaar risks a repeat exclusion of voters, and thus falling afoul of the SC order that forbids denial of service. The Election Commission of India (ECI) is reportedly making renewed efforts to link citizen voter IDs to Aadhaar-the UIDAI's contentious biometric ID, whose creeping overreach was halted by the Supreme Court in September this year. A previous linking effort in 2015, under...

-PTI The biometric identity system is set for a revamp with new offline verification tools, non-intrusive approach Aadhaar, the country’s extraordinary attempt to give every citizen a biometric identity, is set for a massive revamp with new offline verification tools and non-intrusive ways for people seeking to voluntarily use the 12-digit unique number for new bank accounts and mobile connections. After a chaotic 2018, led by the landmark Supreme Court (SC) ruling on the constitutional...

Just a few days ahead of the Kisan Mukti March in Delhi NCR, the provisional results of the Agriculture Census 2015-16 became available in the public domain. The report, among other things, highlights the long-term problems affecting Indian agriculture including fragmentation of land holdings (particularly the marginal and small ones) and shrinking average size of farm land. The provisional results of the latest Agriculture Census reveal that at the national level...

-The TribunePunjab has been using fertilisers in excess to the recommended dosage, which has increased the chemical load in the soil, says KS PannuThe soil health card scheme, started by the Centre in February, 2015, aims to conduct chemical analysis of farm land and issue soil health cards in every 3 years to all farmers of the country. This provides vital data with regard to nutrient deficiencies in the soil...