Parliament must use budget session to discuss key pending bills The budget session of Parliament begins today. The last few sessions have been characterised by disruptions and consequent loss of productive time. To see one indicator, the 15th Lok Sabha, half-way through its term, has lost 30 per cent of scheduled time — the worst ever. As a result, many important bills have been pending. It is to be seen whether...

The Bill governing the unique identity project is unlikely to be introduced in the budget session of parliament, as the Planning Commission needs more time to finalise its revised version.  The Unique Identity Authority of India (uidAI) Bill, which aims to give legal status to the collection of biometric data and issue of unique identification numbers to all resident Indians, was rejected by a parliamentary committee last year.  "There are many issues...

-PTI The campaign to issue Unique Identity Numbers (uid) to people under the 'Aadhaar' scheme has been progessing well in Kerala having already made 62 lakh enrollments so far, according to Chief Minister Oommen Chandy.  "Kerala appears to be ahead of most other state in implementing the scheme with the state government providing all support to it", Chandy said in reply to questions in the state assembly today.  He said the government did...

-The Hindu   ‘The argument that too many people are coming forward to claim benefits is flawed' Aadhaar, the Unique Identification Authority of India (uidAI) project, cannot “fix” all that is wrong with the Public Distribution System, Abhijit Sen, member of the Planning Commission, said here on Saturday. The biometric identification and authentication project has been touted by the Planning Commission as a panacea for all issues that plague the Public Distribution System (PDS),...

India moved a step closer to implementing cash transfers of direct subsidies and social welfare payments after a high-level panel presented the blueprint for effecting it through an Aadhaar-based payment gateway. Accepting the report, which details how all payments and cash transfers can be made electronically, finance minister Pranab Mukherjee indicated that it will be the key to plug leakages and ensure more targeted spending under the government’s social welfare programmes. The...