Parliament approved a draft amendment to the Act on the Protection and Rights of Transgender Persons, which proposes to exclude social orientation from the scope of the law. The Rajya Sabha gave its nod to the bill on March 25, even as opposition members pressed for it to be sent to a select committee.
A bill that seeks to amend Transgender Persons (Protection of Rights) Amendment Act 2019it also provides for graduated penalties based on the severity of the harm caused to such people. The bill was passed in the Lok Sabha on 24 March.
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Responding to the debate in the upper house, Social Justice and Empowerment Minister Virendra Kumar said the proposed legislation is an effort to accommodate all segments of the society together. DMK MP Thiruchi Siva’s proposal to refer the bill to a select committee was not approved.
Why is the amendment controversial?
The amendment to the law seeks to amend the 2019 law, including changes to the process of legal recognition of gender identity.
Critics, including several opposition MPs, say it weakens the principle of self-perceived gender identity upheld by the Supreme Court in its landmark 2014 NALSA judgment.
The amendment to the law caused controversy. The controversial amendment to the law is supposed to take away the right to self-determination of gender. The bill leaves people with a “self-perceived gender identity” out of the definition of “transgender person,” legal news website LiveLaw reported.
The bill seeks to narrow the definition of “transgender person”, adjust the gender identity recognition process, and introduce tougher criminal provisions for crimes involving the forcible conversion of individuals to a transgender identity through mutilation or coercion.
What changes in the bill?
In the 2019 Act, a transgender person was defined as “whose gender does not match the sex assigned to that person at birth and includes a trans-male or trans-female (regardless of whether such person has undergone sex reassignment surgery or hormone therapy or laser therapy or similar other therapy), a person with intersex variation, genderqueer, and a person with a sociocultural identity such as yogi, kinner, hijra, hijra, kinner, hijra.
The definition has now been replaced by “(i) a person who has such socio-cultural identities as kinner, hijra, aravani and jogta or eunuch or a person with intersex variations specified below or a person who has at birth a congenital variation in one or more of the following sex characteristics compared to male or female development:— (a) external sex characteristics; () primary sex characteristics; gonadal development (e) endogenous hormone production or response or such other health states;
(ii) any person or child who has been forced, by force, seduction, inducement, fraud or undue influence, whether with or without consent, to assume, adopt or outwardly present a transgender identity, by mutilation, emasculation, castration, amputation or any surgical, chemical or hormonal procedure or otherwise:
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According to sections 5 and 6 of the Act 2019, as amended by the Transgender Persons (Protection of Rights) Rules, 2020, a transgender person could submit a form (as evidenced by the Act) and on the basis of that form, along with an affidavit of gender identity, the District Magistrate was responsible for issuing an identity certificate. It did not require any medical or physical examination under Rule 4 of the 2020 Rules.
The 2026 amendment requires that the district judge can issue the certificate only after examining the recommendations of an “authority”, which is a medical board headed by a chief medical officer or deputy chief medical officer who can be appointed either by the central government or the state government of the UT administration, LiveLaw reported.
Even after the recommendation of the Medical Board, if the District Judge deems it necessary, he can seek help from other medical professionals. The amendment to the law did not specify who these doctors are.
Has any medical board approved your gender? asks Renuka
During a debate in the Rajya Sabha on Wednesday, Congress MP Renuka Chowdhury launched a scathing attack on the Union government when she compared the amendments to the “Special Intensive Review (SIR) on Transgender Persons” and described it as an exercise in discrimination rather than protection.
Chowdhury asked whether the gender self-identification that all MPs do when filling out official forms before entering Parliament is valid.
“We have all gathered today and we have the privilege of sitting in Parliament, in the Rajya Sabha, after being selected by the Council of States. I want to know that when we enter, we fill a form where we are identified by our gender,” the Congress leader said.
Chowdhury said the amendment bill undermines the transgender community’s hard-won rights by moving away from self-identification toward greater bureaucratic and medical scrutiny.
“You’ve all self-declared; you’ve declared whether you’re male or female. Did some medical board approve this? Given that we’re supposed to be considered privileged, that no one can question us on our gender identity, but we’re going to question transgender and empowered state police to go and identify a human being who has the same constitutional rights as you and I?” she asked.
How was it in a hurry, asks Anish Gawande
Activists questioned the government over what they called a “hasty and short-sighted decision” to pass the bill in the Rajya Sabha as well.
NCP-SP leader Anish Gawande claimed that the bill was passed without any concrete response to several valid concerns raised by the opposition, showing the government’s unwillingness to listen to constructive criticism.
“What is the rush to make adjustments when the world is burning around us? When there is a war in West Asia, an LPG crisis at home and a rupee in free fall that the government refuses to acknowledge,” he asked. Gawandethe country’s first openly gay national spokesperson for a political party.
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Gawande also questioned the government’s claim of protecting the transgender community from exploitation by introducing the bill.
“The government’s argument to prevent abuse is absurd. What kind of abuse are you talking about when the law has not been applied,” he told LiveMint.
This bill is highly unacceptable. This is against my people, my community. This is against our legal rights and identity.
Grace Banu, Dalit transgender activistvehemently against the bill. “I do not accept this. I will fight against it. This bill is highly unacceptable. It is against my people, my community. It is against our legal rights and identity,” Banu told news agency PTI.
(With inputs from PTI and LiveLaw)
