-The Indian Express   As per UIDAI records, 630 million Indians have already been issued Aadhaar cards. The Department of Information Technology has called a meeting of state government secretaries this week for a status check on Aadhaar. The meeting is significant because of the question marks on the continuation of the scheme under the NDA government. Prime Minister Narendra Modi last week scrapped the cabinet committee on Unique Identification Authority of India which...

-The Times of India NEW DELHI: Rajnath Singh, who assumed charge as home minister on Thursday, has hinted at the possibility of looking at the merger of the National Population Register (NPR) exercise and Aadhar scheme. During his first interaction with ministry officials, Singh is said to have asked for suggestions on how the two schemes could be made "complementary" so as to eliminate any duplicity between them. Incidentally, the UPA's flagship Aadhar...

-The Hindustan Times       Gandhinagar (Gujarat): Narendra Modi may have criticised Aadhaar, but official documents show the Gujarat government has implemented the central programme efficiently, while collecting more personal data than required in some cases. The Gujarat government also warned people of "penal action" if the data was not submitted, the documents said, adding chief minister Modi was appointed as the chairperson of the committee overseeing the implementation of Aadhaar. These documents...

-The Business Standard   Study also says MGNREGA workers spent almost 21 minute less in collecting each payment made electronically compared with manual transfer Even as the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government has put on hold its ambitious unique identification (UID) code-linked cash transfer programme, a study by noted economists Karthik Muralidharan, Paul Niehaus and Sandip Sukhtankar shows that leakage of funds allocated for the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA)...

-The Business Standard Since the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government decided to put on hold the Aadhaar-based subsidy transfer for domestic liquefied petroleum gas (LPG), questions have been raised about the future of one of Congress' most ambitious initiatives aimed at plugging leakages. Two months after the government move, a pioneering study by economists Karthik Muralidharan, Paul Niehaus and Sandip Sukhtankar showed leakages dropped 12 per cent when smart cards were...