2 months ago
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President Droupadi Murmu has fixed her assent to the Transgender Persons (Protection of Rights) Amendment Bill, the Union Law Ministry said successful a gazette notification connected Monday (March 30, 2026).
The Rajya Sabha connected Wednesday (March 25, 2026) passed the Bill, a time aft the Lok Sabha cleared the legislation. The Opposition had demanded the Bill should beryllium sent to a prime committee of the House for further scrutiny, arsenic it had provisions that would person an interaction connected the dignity of third-gender people.
Union Social Justice and Empowerment Minister Virendra Kumar, countering the Opposition’s charges against the Bill, had said it was an effort to instrumentality on each segments of the nine together. He had said that the Bill would guarantee extortion to lone those who look favoritism owed to biologic issues and added that transgender radical volition proceed to get ineligible designation and protection.
The authorities had said that the “existing vague definition” of transgender persons had made it “impossible to place the genuine oppressed persons to whom the benefits of the Act are intended to reach”. It said the instrumentality was ne'er meant to support “each and each people of persons with assorted sex identities, self-perceived sex/gender identities oregon sex fluidities” and “was and is intended to support lone those who look terrible societal exclusion owed to biologic reasons for nary responsibility of their ain and nary prime of their own.”
Under the 2019 Act, a transgender idiosyncratic is 1 “whose sex does not lucifer with the sex assigned to that idiosyncratic astatine commencement and includes trans-man oregon trans-woman (whether oregon not specified idiosyncratic has undergone Sex Reassignment Surgery oregon hormone therapy oregon laser therapy oregon specified different therapy), idiosyncratic with intersex variations, genderqueer and idiosyncratic having specified socio-cultural identities arsenic kinner, hijra, aravani and jogta.”
The projected explanation says transgender persons are radical “having specified socio-cultural identities arsenic kinner, hijra, aravani, and jogta, oregon eunuch”, radical with intersex variations, and radical who person “congenital variations” compared to the “male oregon pistillate development” successful their “primary intersexual characteristics, outer genitalia, chromosomal patterns, gonadal development, endogenous hormone accumulation oregon effect oregon specified different aesculapian conditions”.
It goes connected to accidental that immoderate idiosyncratic oregon kid who was “compelled to assume, adopt, oregon outwardly contiguous a transgender identity, by mutilation, emasculation, castration, amputation, oregon immoderate surgical, chemical, oregon hormonal process oregon otherwise” would besides beryllium included successful this definition. However, it adds that this explanation shall not see “persons with antithetic intersexual orientations and self-perceived intersexual identities”.
Unfortunate that President Murmu has fixed her assent to the Transgender Persons (Protection of Rights) Amendment Bill 2026.
The Act is present 1 of the astir regressive pieces of authorities connected transgender rights successful the world. To spot India reverse decades of advancement is shameful.
Activists said the assemblage fought to guarantee that the close to self-identification was codified into instrumentality erstwhile the Act was drafted successful 2019.
A time aft the Rajya Sabha passed the Bill, astir 140 lawyers and feminists wrote to Ms. Murmu, urging her not to assistance assent to the Bill, pointing retired “constitutional violations” successful its provisions and “procedural infirmities” successful the mode it was passed. The missive was written by All-India Feminist Alliance (ALIFA), a pan-India corporate of grassroots organisations, on with National Alliance for Justice, Accountability and Rights (NAJAR), a forum of lawyers and ineligible professionals.
