-Scroll.in By March 2017, Aadhaar will be mandatory for food benefits even as fingerprint authentication problems persist, and rules on grievance redress are missing The National Democratic Alliance government has asked the states and Central ministries to link the details of all beneficiaries of its social welfare schemes with Aadhaar, a biometric-based unique identity number, by March 2017. On September 14, the Unique Identity Authority of India – the agency that manages the...

-The Indian Express The Centre is pushing and many states are implementing Direct Benefit Transfers – and encountering little political opposition The entire focus on ushering in a direct benefit transfer (DBT) regime for delivering subsidies to the targeted populations has so far centered around cooking gas, and to some extent, on isolated pilot experiments with food subsidy. Agriculture subsidies, especially on inputs other than fertilisers, have largely escaped attention in...

-PTI Mumbai: The Centre will make a slew of provisions for Divyang students in the upcoming education policy and has already asked schools to provide adequate facilities to them, HRD Minister Prakash Javadekar said on Saturday. “We will make a lot of provisions for Divyang students across the country in our upcoming new education policy. We have asked the management of schools to provide ramps in buildings, make available separate toilets for...

-The Indian Express The Rajasthan government has said the state’s record has been exemplary in making the transition from the older ration card-based system to using Aadhaar. Jaipur: Food security activists and economists have expressed concern at the exclusion of thousands of PDS beneficiaries in Rajasthan owing to glitches in the Aadhaar enabled electronic Point of Sale (ePoS) device. The Aadhaar enabled ePoS is dealing a double blow to the state’s public distribution...

-Business Standard Fingerprint failure reports of existing Aadhaar-linked PDS cases not revealed The National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government has decided to complete the linking the bank accounts to Aadhaar numbers of all the beneficiaries of large social schemes, including the National Food Security Act, by March 2017. Once done, the delivery of these schemes would be based on biometric authentication linked to Aadhaar or direct cash transfers to linked bank accounts of...