Introduced in the Lok Sabha in December 2011, the UPA government’s Food Security Bill is finally going to be discussed in the current (Budget) Session of Parliament. The proposed legislation is now slated to see many additional amendments from the government, following criticism from the States, NGOs and diverse stake-holders working on access to food and child health. Attempt here is to summarise in a Q & A format the...

-PTI The Plan spending of the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI), responsible for issuing Aadhaar numbers to residents, has been almost doubled to Rs 2,620 crore in 2013-14 from the revised estimates in the current fiscal. The authority's revised estimates of Plan expenditure in the current fiscal stands at Rs 1,350 crore compared to the budget estimates of Rs 1,758 crore. The actual Plan expenditure of the authority was 1,187.53 crore in...

-Deccan Herald Bangalore: The Employees’ Provident Fund Organisation has requested the employers to furnish the Aadhaar numbers of their existing PF subscribers to embed the information in the bank accounts of beneficiaries.   The schemes of the EPFO involving transfer of benefits to beneficiaries have been identified for implementation of direct cash transfers from January 1, 2013. The Organisation has asked the employers to maintain the information in excel format till the...

-Live Mint Concerns raised over the efficiency of banking networks and on-the-ground preparations for the scheme A section of the Sonia Gandhi -led National Advisory Council (NAC) is not happy with the government “rushing into” the direct benefit transfer (DBT) scheme, expected to be the flagship programme of the ruling Congress party in the national election scheduled for next year. At a meeting of the NAC on Tuesday, where Unique Identification Authority of...

-The Economic Times The Direct Benefits Transfer (DBT) scheme commenced with the initial rollout in 20 districts covering seven scholarship schemes. Another 23 districts will be covered by March this year. The intention is to link all government benefits to Aadhaar-based identification of beneficiaries and to channelise the cash benefits through Aadhaar-enabled bank accounts. Irrespective of the merits of translating some benefits delivered in kind like in PDS into their cash-equivalent, for...