President urged not to grant assent to transgender bill

NEW DELHI: Over 140 lawyers, instrumentality students, feminists and societal activists person written to President Droupadi Murmu urging her not to assistance assent to the Transgender Persons (Protection of Rights) Amendment Bill, 2026, and alternatively nonstop it backmost to Parliament for reconsideration.The arguable measure was passed successful Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha connected Tuesday and Wednesday, respectively, amid demands from the absorption that it beryllium referred to a parliamentary lasting committee for wider consultations. The measure present awaits the President’s assent to go law.The signatories of the missive — members of All-India Feminist Alliance (ALIFA) and National Alliance for Justice, Accountability and Rights (NAJAR) — item the omission of the proviso done amendments to the 2019 instrumentality that guaranteed each idiosyncratic the close to “self-perceived sex identity”.

They cited this denial arsenic a usurpation of Constitutional rights.Members of ALIFA and NAJAR — platforms associated with the National Alliance of People’s Movements (NAPM) — successful the missive said they are “alarmed” and “distressed” astatine the undue and unjustifiable haste with which LS and RS passed the “deeply problematic and regressive” bill, “disregarding assemblage concerns, absorption voices and successful usurpation of aggregate binding Supreme Court judgments”.

The missive said,“In the National Legal Services Authority v. Union of India (2014), SC held that the close to self-determination/self-identification of one’s sex is simply a cardinal close protected nether the Constitution. The measure omits Section 4(2) of the Principal Act, which guaranteed each idiosyncratic the close to self-perceived sex identity, thereby violating law rights of citizens of India.

”The missive besides objected to the instauration of a aesculapian board, whose proposal the territory magistrate is required to ‘examine’ earlier issuing a certificate of identity.“While the measure is presented arsenic making implementation ‘more effective’ by reaching those who are “in existent request of protection” the amendments volition successful information exclude a immense bulk of the astir marginalised — economically, culturally and socially — transgender radical from accessing protections and rights, they are entitled to nether law,” it said.