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Supreme Court, Majority view

Aadhaar critics and sceptics have welcomed the Supreme Court’s dilution or quashing of various provisions of the law that affect the middle class but expressed disappointment at its failure to read down Section 7, which makes Aadhaar mandatory for accessing welfare.

“The concerns of the middle classes relating to mandatory linking of their phones and bank accounts to Aadhaar have been addressed but the poor will continue to be denied access to welfare measures because of failures in the system,’’ activist Nikhil Dey told reporters here this evening.

“A part of me wishes that the middle classes continued to be affected by mandatory Aadhaar linking just like the poor will be,” Dey said, voicing a widely held sentiment that the judgment addresses only the concerns of the chattering classes. “There is a class bias.”

He clarified: “It is not that people who do not have Aadhaar are (alone in) being denied services. The reality is that even people with Aadhaar are denied access to welfare measures of the State for no fault of theirs.” Dey said the figure was as high as 20 to 27 per cent of those already enrolled.

According to Dey and Anjali Bhardwaj of the Satark Nagrik Sangathan, the government’s claims of massive savings from the targeted delivery of subsidies via Aadhaar linking are not backed up by data.

“Everything that is not disbursed due to technical faults is not a saving; it is actually rubbing salt into injury,’’ Bhardwaj said.

Questioning the government’s bid to project Aadhaar as an “anti-corruption tool”, Bhardwaj wondered why no FIR had been filed if so much corruption had been plugged.

Usha Ramanathan, who was one of the first to question Aadhaar when it was introduced by the UPA government, made it a point to thank all the lawyers and technologists who had helped the petitioners fight the case pro bono.

All of them hailed the minority judgment of Justice D.Y. Chandrachud. In a statement, Rethink Aadhaar said: “His judgment is the one we would have hoped for as the majority.”

The National Platform for the Rights of the Disabled said the majority judgment making Aadhaar mandatory for obtaining the benefits of government welfare schemes means thousands of disabled people would continue to be deprived. For the disabled, enrolment itself has been a major problem, particularly because of the difficulties of collecting their biometric data.