-The Hindu ‘Banks told to re-verify and retrieve these payments if found to be erroneous’ Karnataka: The input subsidy that the State government paid to a farmer, Venkatamma, has been debited to one Vincent Rajkumar’s account. This is one of the nearly 40,000 suspected erroneous payments in the first-ever Aadhaar Enabled Payment System (AEPS) disbursal of input subsides — given as part of drought relief — to around 18 lakh farmers...

-Frontline.in The Aadhaar project’s headlong push towards “total” enrolment of Indian citizens threatens the privacy of individuals on an unprecedented scale, while its patchy biometric system acts as a tool of denial for the most vulnerable. Meanwhile, the UID chugs along, regardless, fuelled by the avarice of private interests who seek to cash in on citizen data. IN the last seven years, the right to privacy of Indian citizens has been...

-The Hindu Business Line It appears so, going by the various steps taken by the government in that direction New Delhi: The government seems set to make the Aadhaar number issued by the Unique Identification Authority of India the primary identification number for all citizens of the country for not just delivery of services and benefits but also to keep track of financial transactions of each individual and curb tax evasion. This is...

-The Times of India/ PTI NEW DELHI: The government has proposed to make Aadhaar card mandatory for filing income tax return and also applying for permanent account number (PAN). The new proposal has been made through an amendment to the Finance Bill. Recently, the I-T department had announced a mobile app for paying taxes and tracking of refunds. It had also said it was considering issuing PANs on real time basis using Aadhaar...

-NDTV The "highest ever allocation" to NREGA (which also led to it trending on Twitter)  in the Union Budget has provided a useful opportunity to raise some pressing issues related to the implementation of the scheme. It is natural, and welcome, that the government turn to NREGA to provide much-needed relief to those whose already precarious lives have been disrupted by demonetization, a man-made economic disaster. Widespread reports of job losses...