Four days before Prime Minister Narendra Modi made his first public statement surprisingly backing the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI), former UIDAI chairman Nandan Nilekani met with the PM and finance minister Arun Jaitley and persuaded the new regime to persist with Aadhaar numbers and the Direct Benefits Transfer (DBT) scheme.

This meeting -- a life-saver for the Aadhaar programme -- happened on the first of July. On July 5, Modi sought a 100 crore enrolment target under Aadhaar at the 'earliest', casting aside earlier notions that the new government will go slow on the UIDAI project. Read