Transgender Persons (Protection of Rights) Bill

Transgender Persons (Protection of Rights) Bill

News:

Lok Sabha has passed revised Transgender Persons (Protection of Rights) Bill, 2018 to secure the rights of transgender persons

The Transgender Persons (Protection of Rights) Bill, 2018, as passed, is an improved version of the legislation introduced two years ago.

Important Changes in the revised Bill.

• The objectives of the Bill include protecting interests of the transgender people, defining of the term ‘transgender’, giving them recognition and setting up of a National Transgender Council
• New Definition – In the earlier Bill, a transgender person was defined as “one who is (i) neither wholly female or male (ii) a combination of female and male; or (iii) neither female nor male.”
  • The revised definition omits the reference to a ‘neither male nor female’ formulation, and covers any person whose gender does not match the gender assigned at birth, as well as transmen, transwomen, and those who designate themselves based on socio-cultural identities such as hijra, aravani, kinner and jogta.
• Self-Declaration – Earlier, there was no option of self-declaration for a transgender but now the reworked Bill has said that a person would have the right to choose to be identified as a man, woman or transgender, irrespective of sex reassignment surgery (SRS) and hormonal therapy.
• Grievance Mechanism – The Bill had earlier made it mandatory for any organisation employing 100 or more persons to designate an official to examine complaints of discrimination and other grievances. The government has modified this and removed the limit of 100 persons to include to all organisations and institutions.
• Defined Discrimination – Another lacuna in the previous bill was the absence of a definition of “discrimination”. While the Bill laid down that there should be no discrimination against a transgender person, it was not defined – which has now been rectified in the modified Bill.

Legitimate concerns in the revised Bill

• The Bill does not refer to important civil rights like marriage and divorce, adoption, etc., which are critical to transgender persons’ lives and reality, wherein many are engaged in marriage-like relations, without any legal recognition from the State
• Another concern is that the Bill criminalises begging by making it an offence for someone to compel or entice a transgender person into seeking alms.
• Bill does not give effect to the far-reaching directive of the Supreme Court to grant backward class reservation to the transgender community.
• The Supreme Court, in the landmark April 2014 NALSA judgment, had issued a directive “to extend all kinds of reservations in cases of admission in educational institutions and for public appointments” by treating transgender persons as socially and educationally backward classes
• It upholds lighter consequences for discrimination and assault on trans people compared to cisgender people.