It is widely believed that Nandan Nilekani's meeting with Prime Minister Narendra Modi saved the ambitious Aadhaar project from oblivion or a takeover by the home ministry.
The key gain from using Aadhaar will be a drastic cut in impersonation and fictitious identities, thereby plugging a major loophole through which a lot of leakage in subsidy payment takes place.
He also said the government should reform its policy to safeguard privacy of its citizens.
Acting on complaints, the Election Commission on Wednesday ordered suspension of police personnel violating its guidelines on checking of voters and stopping them from casting votes in the Uttar Pradesh bypolls, officials said.
An all-out war had erupted on Twitter on Saturday after TRAI chief gave out his Aadhaar number, challenging anyone to show how mere knowledge of the number can be misused to harm him, triggering a deluge of tweets that claimed to disclose his personal details -- from PAN to mobile number.
The government has initiated a series of measures, including allowing re-verification at subscribers' doorstep and One Time Password (OTP) based authentication of existing users, to make the entire exercise easier for telecom subscribers.
Aadhaar is a 12 digit individual identification number issued by the Unique Identification Authority of India on behalf of the government of India.
The link requires a person to punch in his PAN number, Aadhaar number and the exact name as given in the Aadhaar card.
'Earlier, our cost of funds was higher than most in the peer group.'
More than 50 per cent of SIP accounts come from semi-urban and rural areas.
New schemes allows consumers without Aadhaar to receive cash directly in their bank accounts
E-KYCs and Aadhaar authentication are of crucial importance to the fin-tech companies as the recent RBI instructions require strict KYCs for these players to function in the market.
The bench also said that a seven-judge bench needed to be constituted for authoritatively deciding a batch of petitions challenging the Aadhaar scheme on grounds including that it infringes on the Right to Privacy of citizens.
In a last ditch attempt before the issue moves to a larger Constitutional bench, the government on Wednesday made a fresh pitch before Supreme Court for allowing voluntary use of Aadhaar cards for welfare schemes, saying it was prepared to give an affidavit by the "highest functionary" by Thursday morning that nobody will be deprived of benefits for lack of it.
It emerges that not only does the CIDR project fails the test of fairness, justness and reasonableness besides the test of not being fanciful, oppressive or arbitrary; it also fails the test of Arthashastra, Hadith and the Bible.
AAdhar cannot be successful unless there is proper coordination at the helm.
The protection of individual security and privacy is critical to building safe online systems, say Mitchell Baker and Ankit Gadgil.
The AG said that due to Aadhaar, government has saved over Rs 50,000 crore on the schemes to benefit the poor as well as the pension schemes.
An average voter turnout of 20 per cent was recorded in the first four hours of voting in the bypolls to 15 assembly seats spread across Uttar Pradesh, Punjab, Kerala and Uttarakhand on Wednesday amid an incident of stone pelting in a village in UP's Meerapur and allegations of police personnel deterring voters from casting their ballot.
Jaitley said the cap on cash transactions is being reduced to curb generation of black money and the move to introduce electoral bonds is for cleansing the political funding
'The attempt to make Aadhaar mandatory has now emerged as an act of bullying by government agencies, turning citizens into subjects by making fundamental rights conditional on biometric identification,' says Gopal Krishna.
Linking all accounts is a difficult and costly task for brokers
The last date for linking Aadhaar for mobile services will remain February 6 as per the Supreme Court order.
Sharad Sharma, co-founder and governing council member at iSPIRT, on Tuesday admitted using anonymous accounts to troll on social media those who raised questions on Aadhaar and its applications by the government.
Having made Aadhaar mandatory for receiving subsidised cooking gas (LPG) in 19 districts, Oil Minister M Veerappa Moily on Wednesday said the unique identification card will no longer be a must for giving subsidises unless cleared by the Supreme Court.
The ministry, under Ravi Shankar Prasad, will soon prepare a Cabinet note for bringing Aadhaar under its administrative jurisdiction.
A 25-year-old man in Jharkhand's Khunti district allegedly strangled his live-in partner to death and chopped her body into 40 to 50 pieces in a forested area. The accused, Naresh Bhengra, was arrested after stray dog was found with human body parts near Jordag village. Bhengra had married another woman without informing his partner and took her to the forest to kill her after she pressured him to return to Khunti. The incident has sent shockwaves in the region, recalling the Shraddha Walker murder case of 2022.
The sequel to J P Dutta's Border has its fair share of controversy surrounding it.
A bench headed by Chief Justice Dipak Misra said there was no urgency to hear the matter after Attorney General K K Venugopal told the bench that the Centre will extend the September 30 deadline.
The government hurried through the scheme, which required a complete re-engineering of welfare delivery, severely challenging its implementation.
The Centre also referred to various international economic reports and surveys to emphasise on the need for Aadhaar.
Biometric authentication is based on the unscientific and questionable assumption that there are parts of human body that does not age, wither and decay with the passage of time.
Venkaiah Naidu said Aadhaar will not be made mandatory till the entire population gets such cards or UID numbers.
A key argument against the Aadhaar scheme was that it was violative of the nine-judge bench verdict that had held that Right to Privacy is a fundamental right under the Constitution.
Supreme Court allows more instruments to use the biometric card.
'The most valuable personal sensitive information of present and future citizens has been made available to foreign data firms and governments and non-State actors for all time to come,' says Gopal Krishna.
Private firms' offer to print Aadhaar details on plastic card a breach of law
The opposition parties were demanding a division of votes as they had moved a motion to send the Bill to a select committee, which was rejected by voice vote.
Aadhaar is a creation of the previous Congress-led government.
Diversified business house Trident Group would become the first corporate to use Aadhaar Payment Bridge (APB) for disbursal of salaries to its employees.
