Still most of the SIM cards activation are being done through Aadhaar numbers

Supreme Court recently ordered that Aadhaar card is not mandatory to get the services from private companies, including private banks, telecom companies and online retailers. However, the private companies such as Paytm, Reliance Jio, Amazon and Flipkart are still demanding Aadhaar card from the customers. Still most of the SIM cards activation are being done through Aadhaar numbers in many rural places, due to lack of awareness on the Supreme court’s order. The order says that the private companies should not demand Aadhaar numbers from their customers, until the government pass an appropriate rule regarding the use of Aadhaar numbers by these companies.

The businesses and these private companies still continue against the Supreme court’s rule, since the authorities of various departments remained silent on implementing the rule. UIDAI mentioned that the private companies must delink the Aadhaar numbers from users. However, they refused to accept that and claimed for new legislation for using Aadhaar numbers. Since the personal information of the users can be taken by the companies, people must avoid Aadhaar card number for authentication purpose, until a passing a new legislation regarding this issue.

WhatsApp appointed grievance officer to remove fake messages from circulation in India. Very soon the WhatsApp users can inform or arise complaints on fake messages through the application. The users can find options to make a complaint or send information regarding the fake messages in the settings tab. There is also an option to directly reach the grievance officer.
WhatsApp has been under pressure from the government officials to develop tools to identify and reduce fake message circulation. On the result of this, WhatsApp has appointed Komal Lahiri as the grievance officer for India. Lahiri is the senior director of Global consumer operations and localisation in WhatsApp. There are more than 200 million WhatsApp users in India. WhatsApp has already restricted message forwards to five chats at a time. WhatsApp also introduced ‘forward’ label to indicate the forward messages. In order to discourage mass forwarding, the quick forward button also removed from the application. With all these actions, the appointment of new grievance officer for India added value to curb fake messages.

The central government raised import duty on 19 non essential products on Wednesday. The import duty was increased to 20% on washing machines, air conditioners and refrigerators. The changes is the custom duty will be effective from the Midnight of 26 – 27, September. The government has taken this decision to narrow down the Current Account Deficit. The Current Account Deficit is the difference between inflow and outflow of foreign exchange. The Current Account Deficit value was widened to 2.4 percent of the country’s GDP in the first quarter of 2018. The government has taken this tariff measure to curb the import of non essential items.