-The Hindu The Election Commission might be well-intentioned in seeking to ban opinion polls in the run-up to an election, but the move does not seem to be sound in law, and is certainly not desirable in practice. The reasoning for a ban is that opinion polls influence voters prior to polling, and therefore the results of such polls should be withheld until after the end of voting. Needless to say,...

-The Economic Times NEW DELHI: The government, in a bind over a recent Supreme Court order asking it to desist from linking social welfare schemes with its ambitious unique identity card Aadhaar, on Monday held out an assurance to the top court that no one would be deprived of any social welfare benefits for not holding Aadhaar. The government said while it had initiated the scheme to provide benefit transfers using Aadhaar...

-PTI NEW DELHI: The alleged chit fund scam in West Bengal involving the Saradha Group revolves around a total sum of Rs 2,460 crore with 80 per cent of the depositors' monies still remaining unpaid, a latest investigation report has revealed. The report also states that the arrested Saradha chairman Sudipta Sen was in "total control" of all deposits made by his group companies, which are under the scanner for having perpetrated...

-The Business Standard Says electronic payments can help manage Fraud and leakage risks in government payment programmes The role that technology plays in the economy has become so integral that it can't be ignored, said a recent report by the World Bank. According to the report, electronic payments can save over one per cent of India's gross domestic product (GDP). "Cash may still be king at times, but compared with electronic payments, cash...

-The Hindu The Supreme Court's Interim order defining Aadhaar from subsidies has left the Centre grappling with the future of the Unique Identification programme. It must now provide a clear roadmap to citizens and address their genuine concerns. Unique, universal, ubiquitous: three words that Mr Nandan Nilekani used to describe the ambitions of the UID project. Every person across the population of over 1.2 billion was to be uniquely identified. Every person...