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Informist, Monday, May 4, 2026

 

NEW DELHI – The Supreme Court Monday refused to stay the provisions of the Transgender Persons (Protection of Rights) Amendment Act, 2026 and sought responses from the Centre and state governments to pleas challenging the law's constitutional validity. "The matter shall be initially placed before a three-judge bench to be constituted by the Chief Justice of India. No question of grant of any interim order. No question of interim stay," the court said.

 

The apex court was hearing petitions by the National Council for Transgender Persons' Chairperson Laxmi Narayan Tripathi and its member Zainab Patel, the Kinner Maa Ek Samajik Sanstha Trust, and by various individuals. The petitioners argued that the new law does not allow self-recognition of one's gender. If an individual goes to a hospital, asks to be recognised as belonging to a particular gender, and seeks that an operation on gender be carried out affirming this, the hospital could deny the same, saying that the new law prohibits assigning a gender based on self-recognition, the petitioners said.

 

The top court noted that people could pretend to be transgender to get welfare benefits if self-identification continued to be a valid manner of identifying transgender persons. "In this country of 140 crore (1.4 billion) people, some can masquerade this facility for the grant of reservations also, isn't it?" it asked.

 

In March, President Droupadi Murmu gave her assent to the 2026 Amendment Act. According to the changes, the self-declaration process for transgenders has been removed and now, the law requires a "medical board" to certify gender identity. The Act provided that a revised certificate of identity may be obtained in case a transgender person undergoes surgery to change gender.   

 

However, transgender rights activists have contested the amendments on medical and administrative verification of gender identity, which replaced self-determination with state-controlled certification. A petition filed in the Delhi High Court last month said that the  introduction of medical boards and biological criteria such as genitalia, chromosomes, and hormonal factors to determine identity was intrusive, violative of bodily integrity, and incompatible with the right to decisional autonomy. The redefined classification of transgender persons was overly restrictive, biologically determinative, and exclusionary of individuals whose identity was based on self-perception, Chandresh Jain, a practising advocate and the petitioner in the high court, had said.  End

 

Reported by Surya Tripathi

Edited by Avishek Dutta

 

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