The Supreme Court’s judgement upholding the constitutional validity of Aadhaar received a mixed response from petitioners and activists on Wednesday.

Economist Jean Dreze, who has submitted material to support the petitions in court, said the judgement was disappointing for several reasons, but imposed “useful restrictions on Aadhaar”.

“First, since Aadhaar can be made mandatory for PAN cards and DBT [direct benefit transfer], it is de facto compulsory for the bulk of the population,” Dreze told Scroll.in. Secondly, the top court missed the real threat Aadhaar poses to privacy, he added.

“The main threat is not data breaches, but the power Aadhaar gives the government to link multiple databases and build an infrastructure of surveillance,” he said. “That threat is intact. Third, the judgement does not really address the issue of Aadhaar-related exclusion. Poor people will continue to face multiple problems related to the imposition of Aadhaar or Aadhaar-based biometric authentication on welfare schemes.”

“Fourth, the judgement does not restrain UIDAI’s awesome powers, which have been misused again and again. These are some of the judgement’s shortcomings, partly redeemed by Justice Chandrachud’s dissenting opinion,” he said.

Security expert Samir Kelekar, who submitted an affidavit to the Supreme Court showing that it was possible to use Aadhaar to conduct surveillance, said he does not think the judgement is good “because Aadhaar is required for tax returns”.

“People like me, who have not taken Aadhaar, have to go for it now,” he told Scroll.in. “The other parts are good, and mainly the part that private companies can’t make it mandatory.”

On the right to privacy, Kelekar said the Supreme Court observed that Aadhaar does not evade the right to privacy, “but it is ambiguous”. He said there were “no effective ways to safeguard databases” and it won’t be easy to prove how people can access the databases. “Overall, not a good judgement but not at the other extreme also,” Kelekar said, adding that it raises concerns for people who have already submitted their Aadhaar details for services.

Aishwarya Bhati, lawyer for petitioner Matthew Thomas, welcomed the judgement, but felt that Justice DY Chandrachud’s dissenting opinion was especially “robust and [had] sound reasoning” and “will lay down foundations for future judgements”.

“History has shown that minority judgement becomes important later,” she told Scroll.in. “I feel the minority judgement actually understood us. The matter is unique for a couple of reasons because the Supreme Court was considering an interplay that tech becomes important over everything hampering the fundamental rights of the citizens.”

Bhati said the judgement “can’t be taken as a victory” and better safety mechanisms need to be built “as with tech [technology] there will be newer problems of security”. She added that the petition highlighted concerns about national security. “I think it is very important for the government to stay on its heel and make sure it is not abused for commercial security concern... this is going to be a constant battle.”

Nachiket Udupa, an engineer and one of the petitioners, told Scroll.in that the Supreme Court striking down mobile phone linkage to Aadhaar and Section 57 implies that “they acknowledge problems with Aadhaar.” Section 57 had allowed private entities to use Aadhaar for verification purposes.

Vrinda Bhandari, a lawyer representing the petitioners, told Scroll.in that it was ironic that the court termed the Aadhaar card a document of empowerment” despite the death and exclusion that have occurred due to authentication failures.

“The majority upheld Section 7 of the Act, which made the receipt of benefits contingent on the production of Aadhaar while ignoring the hardship and exclusion faced by the most marginalised sections of society,” Bhandari said.

Bhandari said the financial viability of the Aadhaar project was under question since the Supreme Court has struck down Section 57. She said questions on surveillance “will still have to be litigated in the future”.

“If the [Supreme] Court’s concern was a unique identity, it always had the option of making Aadhaar truly voluntary so that people could choose what they wanted according to their wishes - this should be the case,” Bhandari said.

Reetika Khera, an economics professor who submitted material in support of the petitions, said the verdict was disappointing. “Disappointed because apart from striking down Section 57 of the Aadhaar Act, the majority opinion provides little relief to the poor from Aadhaar (under Section 7), in terms of accessing essential entitlements,” she told Scroll.in.

She added that was also disappointing that the judges who have signed the majority opinion “believed the government’s false assurances that nobody will be denied their entitlements due to Aadhaar”. “We know that the governments have been blatantly violating the Supreme Court’s orders since 2013, and in its present form, exclusion is built into the Aadhaar eco-system,” Khera said.

Khera, however, added that she was not “dejected or defeated by today’s verdict”. “We are emboldened in our struggle against the Aadhaar project by the observations made by Justice Chandrachud,” she said. “Like him, we believe that the passage of the Aadhaar Act was as a Money Bill ‘a fraud in the Constitution’, but more importantly that the project is unconstitutional in its entirety.” Khera said she hoped that one day Chandrachud’s verdict “will be the majority opinion and unanimous opinion”.

Retired Justice KS Puttaswamy, one of the first people to question Aadhaar’s validity, welcomed the judgement. “After holistic consideration, my opinion is that the majority judgement on the validity of Aadhaar Act is correct though I have not read the whole judgement yet,” the retired Karnataka High Court judge told IANS.