An important challenge during the Supreme Court’s Aadhaar hearings was the question of whether citizens have absolute rights over their bodies. The government categorically stated that citizens do not have such rights and thus it can collect our biometrics even if we are unwilling to part with them.

While the matter has been put to rest through the Right to Privacy judgment, the government is still hunting us with new schemes through which to collect our bodily information. The National Digital Health Blueprint proposed by the government in fact recommends that government collects our health information to support an illusory information economy.

A successor to the proposed draft health stack, the National Digital Health Blueprint is yet another plan to collect our most sensitive personal information with no data protection law in sight. The Blueprint recommends building health data exchanges with electronic health records using Aadhaar for identification and consent management for providing access to private companies. Recommended by none other than ex-UIDAI chairman J Satyanarayana, the blueprint is yet another scenario of contempt to the Supreme Court’s judgment on Aadhaar.