Latest news with #TransgenderPersons(ProtectionofRights)Act
Time of India
6 days ago
- Politics
- Time of India
Trans woman gets passport with TG cert as identity proof
Kolkata: A trans woman received her passport based on her transgender identity card (TG ID), probably the first such case in the country. The passport battle, however, was long drawn for Anuprabha Das Mazumder (32), who knocked on several doors before the Calcutta High Court ruled in her favour on June 18. A gender rights activist, she is now looking forward to attending an international event on transgender issues in London next month. "I am relieved and happy. Winning this passport battle is for the trans community at large. From now on, any community person applying for a passport can cite this example and the court ruling to make the process smoother," Das Mazumder told TOI. She had applied for her passport for the first time in 2023. During the interview, her TG ID card was rejected as an identity document. Not giving up, Das Mazumder approached passport officials, stressing that according to the Transgender Persons (Protection of Rights) Act, TG ID is a valid document. Receiving no positive response, she moved the high court through counsel Suman Ganguly. On July 18, Justice Amrita Sinha directed the passport office to consider the petitioner's application to recognise the TG card as a valid identity document while ordering Das Mazumder to apply afresh. by Taboola by Taboola Sponsored Links Sponsored Links Promoted Links Promoted Links You May Like Villas For Sale in Dubai Might Surprise You Dubai villas | search ads Get Deals Undo You Can Also Check: Kolkata AQI | Weather in Kolkata | Bank Holidays in Kolkata | Public Holidays in Kolkata Accordingly, she reapplied on July 14, after which the process began. Even the Barrackpore Police Commissionerate played a proactive role by ensuring a smooth police verification, done on July 16. The passport arrived at Das Mazumder's Naihati address on Tuesday evening. "Once the court intervened, the support came rolling in from all authorities, ensuring a smooth procedure. I hope this serves as a trendsetter where officials accept the TG card as a valid document," said Bappaditya Mukherjee of Prantakatha, who is also Das Mazumder's spouse.
Time of India
20-07-2025
- Politics
- Time of India
Campus Closet: Why Trans Students Stay Hidden And What DU Plans To Do About It
New Delhi: Despite introducing a "third gender" option in admission forms a decade ago, the University of Delhi (DU) is yet to see a single enrolment in its regular programmes from a transgender student. Officials say this reflects the stigma and hesitation many transgender individuals still face when openly declaring their identity. Most either apply under binary categories or opt for alternative study modes like the School of Open Learning. To address this gap and build a more inclusive campus, DU has set up a Transgender Resource and Training Cell (TRTC) under the Department of Adult Continuing Education and Extension. The cell will assist students identifying as transgender with admissions, offer counselling, promote infrastructure reforms such as gender-neutral toilets, and coordinate sensitisation campaigns across colleges to reduce dropouts and increase representation. Professor Ashutosh Kumar, head of the department of Continuing Education, under which the cell will operate, said TRTC will facilitate implementation of the Transgender Persons (Protection of Rights) Act, 2019 and Rules, 2020. by Taboola by Taboola Sponsored Links Sponsored Links Promoted Links Promoted Links You May Like American Investor Warren Buffett Recommends: 5 Books For Turning Your Life Around Blinkist: Warren Buffett's Reading List Undo "We will support prospective and current students through admission-related assistance, name-change documentation, family or institutional challenges, and sensitisation workshops. The goal is to ensure equitable space for transgender persons," he said. You Can Also Check: Delhi AQI | Weather in Delhi | Bank Holidays in Delhi | Public Holidays in Delhi Kumar added that the cell also aims to sign MoUs with institutions like the National Institute of Social Defence, identify nodal officers in colleges, and connect with transgender communities through NGOs and HIV/AIDS organisations to create awareness about higher education opportunities at DU. Although the "third gender" option has been available on admission forms since 2015, uptake remains negligible. "We have received applications from around 100 such students so far, but either they did not want to officially identify themselves as transgender fearing discrimination, or they opted to study through the School of Open Learning," Kumar said. In 2018, 10-15 transgender applicants made inquiries at the admission centre but none enrolled. Last year, one student joined a postgraduate programme but did not disclose their identity publicly. "Several students approach us privately but choose not to reveal their identity due to fear of stigma," he added. A policy document prepared by the Transgender Resource Centre (TRC) highlights the urgency of institutional inclusion. According to the 2011 Census, India is home to 4.88 lakh transgender persons, including over 54,000 children under six. Delhi's transgender population stands at 4,213, with a literacy rate of just under 63%. Despite constitutional protections, TRC notes that transgender individuals face persistent discrimination, school dropouts, and barriers to employment. A 2017 Unesco study revealed that 60% of transgender students experienced physical bullying, over 70% suffered from anxiety and depression, and more than half skipped classes. A third dropped out entirely, and only 18% of incidents were reported to school authorities—of which action was taken in just over half the cases. The document further links low education levels with high-risk livelihoods, such as sex work, which increases exposure to HIV and other STDs. To combat these entrenched issues, the university's new transgender inclusion policy proposes a wide set of reforms spanning academic, administrative, infrastructural, and cultural spheres. Colleges will be encouraged to proactively identify transgender students, allowing them to submit affidavits and govt-authorised certificates to confirm identity. A confidential contact person in each institution will manage records and provide support. "Institutions must create a congenial academic ambience," the policy notes. All official forms and certificates will include the "transgender" option, though students may still identify as male or female if they prefer. Dedicated admission helpdesks, reserved seats, scholarships, hostel fee waivers, and even free admission are being proposed to improve access. Counsellors across colleges will receive training to handle the specific mental health needs of transgender and gender non-conforming students, while also promoting broader acceptance among peers, staff, and families. Anti-ragging committees will be mandated to protect transgender students specifically, and a dedicated grievance cell will deal with complaints of bullying or abuse. Participation in events like Transgender Remembrance Day and National Transgender Day will be encouraged across campuses. Infrastructure changes include the establishment of gender-neutral restrooms, access to tailored healthcare, and dedicated hostel facilities. A central Transgender Resource Centre will also be created to coordinate Equal Opportunity Cells and counselling centres across DU. Academically, DU plans to integrate transgender issues into undergraduate and postgraduate syllabi—covering biological, sociological, psychological, political, and constitutional aspects. It will also promote courses on gender and sexuality and encourage research projects that centre transgender experiences. TRC will spearhead sensitisation drives for teaching and non-teaching staff, and guide institutions on best practices. The policy has been drafted under the guidance of professor Rajesh, coordinator of TRC, with contributions from transgender rights activist Amrita Sarkar. "Creating an enabling and respectful space for transgender persons is not just about access—it's about dignity, rights, and the ability to thrive," said Professor Kumar. "Through this cell and policy, we want to ensure DU becomes a truly inclusive space.
Scroll.in
17-07-2025
- General
- Scroll.in
How a landmark Kerala High Court judgment recognised existence of transgender families
Zahhad and Ziya Paval will never forget the call they received on the morning of June 2. On the line was their lawyer, Padma Lakshmi, her voice brimming with excitement. The Kerala High Court had delivered its verdict in a case filed by them in 2023. Their two-year struggle for a simple, yet profoundly important, piece of paper was over. In a landmark decision, Justice Ziyad Rahman AA of the Kerala High Court directed the Kozhikode Municipal Corporation to issue a new birth certificate for their daughter, Zabiya: one that removed the columns for 'father' and 'mother' and simply listed Zahhad and Ziya as her 'parents'. Zahhad, born a woman, identifies as a transgender man and gave birth to Zabiya in February 2023. The child was conceived with Ziya, who was born a man and now identifies as a transgender woman. 'The judgement was totally unexpected and felt too good to be true,' recalls Zahhad, a 25-year-old accountant. For him and Ziya, a 24-year-old professional dancer, this was more than just a legal victory. It was the affirmation of their transgender family. Motherhood and a birth certificate Zahhad and Ziya met through social media and have been together since 2020. They live together in Kozhikode. Zahhad comes from a Christian family in Thiruvananthapuram and Ziya from a Muslim family in Mallapuram. Both of them possess transgender identity cards issued under the Transgender Persons (Protection of Rights) Act, 2019. Zahhad's Aadhaar card lists his gender as male and Ziya's shows hers as female. Under the 2019 Act, applicants not need to undergo sex reassignment surgery or any other medical procedure in order to obtain a transgender identity card. Similarly, self-identification is sufficient for gender change on an Aadhaar card. The story began with the couple's desire for a child. 'Becoming a mother is the dream of every woman, including trans women,' Zahhad said. But for transgender couples in India, adoption remains a near-impossible bureaucratic maze. Seeing Ziya's deep-seated wish, Zahhad, a trans man, made a profound decision. He would pause his hormonal therapy for transitioning from female to male – which is a prerequisite for undergoing sex-change surgery – to carry their child. 'My ultimate dream was to provide the gift of motherhood to Ziya,' he said. 'That is what kept him going through all the difficulties.' But the birth of a baby girl in 2023, brought a new, unexpected hurdle. 'It was a very difficult moment when we saw the birth certificate, listing me as mother and Ziya as father,' Zahhad recounted. The document, a foundational identity paper, fundamentally misgendered them. It reversed their lived realities – Zahhad as a trans man and Ziya as a trans woman – and locked them into gender identities they had fought to move beyond. Their immediate concern was for Zabiya. 'We knew that Zabiya could face a lot of difficulties getting an Aadhaar card or passport and other primary documents because of the mismatch between our gender identities and our gender listed on her birth certificate,' Zahhad said. 'This was our main concern.' They knew they had to act, not just for themselves, but for everyone who might follow in their footsteps. 'We immediately thought that this needed to be changed,' he said. 'We also knew that this would be favourable to the whole trans community.' Bureaucratic battle Their first attempts at a solution were met with a bureaucratic wall. They made representations to the Kozhikode Municipal Corporation and filed a grievance on the chief minister's online portal so that the birth certificate simply list them as parents rather than as 'mother' and 'father', but to no avail. The corporation's position was simple: the law, specifically Form No 5 of the Kerala Registration of Births and Deaths Rules, 1999 mandated columns for "mother" and "father." Its hands were tied. This forced the couple to seek legal recourse. They turned to Padma Lakshmi, a fellow transgender person and a lawyer known for her work within the trans community. 'Padma is a part of our community and like a sister to us,' said Zahhad. 'That is why it was easy for us to approach her.' Within six months of Zabiya's birth, they filed a writ petition in the Kerala High Court. The legal journey was arduous. 'Five different judges heard our case for over a year,' Zahhad pointed out. The long wait was difficult, but their faith in their legal team, which included legal academic Mariyamma AK and Advocate on Record at the Supreme Court, Prashant Padmanabhan never wavered. Lakshmi, who had long known the couple, felt a personal stake in the outcome. 'It was my personal wish to provide the amended birth certificate as a birthday gift to Zabiya,' she told Scroll. Given the lack of knowledge of transgender struggles, arguing the case was not easy. 'The facts of the case are very difficult to understand for a normal person,' she said. 'Finally, Justice Rahman understood that this is the life of a transgender person. They need support from our society.' A 'living' law for a changing society Rahman's judgment responded to the legal challenge with judicial empathy and progressive interpretation. Instead of seeing the Registration of Births and Deaths Act, 1969 as a rigid text, the court viewed it as a 'living organism' that must adapt to societal changes. The court acknowledged the petitioners' fears, stating their apprehension of 'confusions and prejudices' was genuine. It recognised that while the law was framed with a binary concept of gender, society had evolved. The court cited landmark Supreme Court rulings, including the NALSA judgment of 2014 which granted legal recognition to transgender persons and the Deepika Singh case of 2022, which recognised 'atypical' families outside the traditional notion of a married mother and father, holding that such 'family units' must not face disadvantage under law. Rahman's judgement quoted a powerful passage from the Deepika Singh verdict. 'Such atypical manifestations of the family unit are equally deserving not only of protection under law but also of the benefits available under social welfare legislation,' the apex court had observed. 'The black letter of the law must not be relied upon to disadvantage families which are different from traditional ones.' Rahman's solution was innovative and practical. He noted that the Registration of Births and Deaths Act and the Kerala Registration of Births and Deaths Rules only required registrars to furnish 'extracts' of the birth register, not an exact copy of all information. This meant the birth certificate could be modified to reflect the parents' identities without altering the primary register that the municipal corporation possesses. The court directed the corporation to issue a new certificate for Zabiya – one that respected her parents' gender identities by simply naming them as "parents". The court asserted its duty to intervene when laws fail to keep pace with social reality, stating that the case was fit for 'social justice adjudication' to carry out 'social context judging'. It defined these as being sensitive and positively inclined towards a socio-economically weaker party. This prevents, the court said, the miscarriage of justice caused by the imbalance between unequal parties in an adversarial process. A victory for trans rights For the couple, the verdict is a vindication. 'This is not just a victory for Zahhad and Ziya; it is a victory for the whole trans community,' Zahhad said. He was candid about the immense challenges they had faced – from his health complications post-delivery to negative comments from society and even some within their own community. Yet, their story is also one of profound love and support. Ziya cared for Zahhad and Zabiya for a year while he recovered his health. He called their partnership 'a gift from God'. Their only wish now is to provide a stable, loving home for their daughter, who already enjoys dancing and singing, Zahhad said with a giggle, just like Ziya. The judgment has opened a door, offering a glimmer of hope that the right to family is not beyond the reach of transgender persons in India. But Zahhad offered a word of caution given that India was still socially conservative when it came to trangender rights. 'Every trans person needs a family,' he said. 'But they should think and then proceed … because it is not an easy task.'
The Hindu
11-07-2025
- Politics
- The Hindu
Changes to marriage, succession, criminal, tenancy laws suggested in policy brief to panel looking into issues of queer community
A new civil union framework to recognise 'non-marital intimacies', horizontal reservations for transgender people in education and jobs, 'safe and inclusive' access to washrooms, amendments to marriage, succession, and tenancy laws among a gamut of other laws, and a ban on treatments like 'conversion therapy', are just some of the recommendations and suggestions submitted to the Union government's high-powered committee that has been looking into issues faced by queer persons on account of their identity and non-recognition of queer relationships. After months of deliberations, public consultations, and expert inputs with and from the queer community, activists, lawyers, civil society, the policy think tank Vidhi Centre for Legal Policy, in collaboration with NGO Keshav Suri Foundation, has sent in a detailed policy brief proposing executive and legislative actions for at least 12 Union Ministries and dozens of statutory bodies in the areas of recognition of queer relationships and families, discrimination in access to goods and services, queer affirmative healthcare, and prevention and prohibition of violence. These areas of concern were identified by the Supreme Court in 2023, when it decided the same-sex marriage case and the court had recorded that the Union government would form a committee to address issues persisting in these areas. Last April, a six-member panel headed by the Cabinet Secretary was formed to this end. The detailed policy brief with proposed action addressing hundreds of issues faced by the LGBTQIA+ community was submitted to the high-powered committee and the Cabinet Secretary in April this year, and the policy briefs on each of these areas are scheduled to be publicly launched on Saturday (July 12, 2025) in New Delhi. Among the recommendations made to the government are ones that call for amending the Special Marriage Act and the Indian Succession Act to make them gender-neutral; repeal the 'objection and notice regime' for the registration of marriages; 'move away from a gendered approach' to determining vulnerability in case of divorce proceedings; and recognising 'compulsory shares for all children' to prevent parents from discriminating on grounds of sexual orientation or gender identity. Residence rights In addition, the recommendations call for a 'reform' of the Transgender Persons (Protection of Rights) Act, 2019, suggesting that the law needed 'to rehaul its approach to the residence rights of transgender persons'. This includes the proposal to introduce horizontal reservation for transgender people in jobs and education and removing the requirement of medical procedure to identify within the binary genders of man and woman and setting up grievance redressal mechanisms to address private discrimination. The policy brief goes on to suggest amending criminal laws to protect people members of the LGBTQIA+ community from sexual violence, also recommending the re-introduction of the equivalent of Section 377 of the IPC so that non-consensual same-sex sexual violence can be provided for while leaving consensual same-sex intimate activity de-criminalised. It has also called for amendments to laws dealing with workplace harassment to be inclusive of queer individuals and fresh laws that comprehensively cover discrimination against them. The recommendations call for reservation for transgender persons in school education, higher education, and employment, also proposing their inclusion in school processes and student grievance redressal cells, building inclusive curricula, recognising and prohibiting discrimination against queer persons. They also call for ensuring that teachers in schools and universities are 'queer affirmative', and inclusion of transgender persons in 'gendered activities', including 'gender-based sports teams' as per their chosen gender identities, and the introduction of an 'open sports' category, along with many others. The brief also recommends amendments to tenancy laws, and cooperative society laws to prohibit discrimination on grounds of gender identity or sexual orientation. In addition to suggesting the country-wide expansion of the government's Garima Greh scheme for transgender people, the brief also calls for similar shelter homes for non-transgender LGBTQIA+ individuals who might need a safe space. The policy brief has also gone on to propose the banning of all forms of 'conversion therapy', prohibiting 'unnecessary intersex surgeries', and remove the blanket ban on blood donations for transgender persons, men who have sex with men, and female sex workers. The brief has also recommended the government to use its executive powers to issue clarifications and orders that provide for nomination benefits for people in queer relationships and families, urging the government to recognise queer relationships for the purposes of financial services, and proposing a nomination regime for social welfare benefits and in the labour and employment sectors.
Time of India
10-07-2025
- Politics
- Time of India
Workshop on LGBTQIA+ rights held at Knp Airport
Kanpur: A special workshop aimed at sensitising airport personnel on LGBTQIA+ rights was organised at Kanpur Airport on Thursday. The session was conducted by the Kanpur Queer Welfare Foundation (KQWF) in collaboration with the All India Satrangi Salaam Association (AISSA) and saw active participation from CISF personnel, airport staff, and airline representatives. The workshop focused on ensuring constitutionally compliant, inclusive, and dignified treatment of LGBTQIA+ and transgender passengers, particularly in security procedures. included discussions on the Transgender Persons (Protection of Rights) Act, 2019, and landmark Supreme Court rulings such as NALSA (2014) and Navtej Johar (2018). The event was led by KQWF founder Anuj Pandey, co-founder Ehsan Ansari, and AISSA Chief Trustee Bhartendu Vimal Dubey. the session also featured community representatives Abhishek Kumar and Dev Singh, who shared real-life experiences and practical suggestions. A key part of the session included a 30-point guideline on respectful interaction with LGBTQIA+ individuals, addressing aspects such as language, physical checks, informed consent, and privacy. Role plays, case studies, and interactive discussions added depth to the training. KQWF announced that similar sessions will be held at other airports and CISF centres across the country, with AISSA providing legal and technical assistance.
