Transgender rights: House panel proposed, govt rejects

Transgender rights: House panel proposed, govt rejects(Indian Express)

Context

• The Union Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment has decided to junk the recommendations of a parliamentary committee report the first ever government document to recognize the rights of transgender persons to partnerships and marriage, making them no longer criminalized under IPC Section 377, apart from offering other rights.

Protection of Rights

• The ministry is all set to re-introduce the original version of The Transgender Persons (Protection of Rights) Bill, in the next session of Parliament.
• The Standing Committee report recommended specific provisions in the ministry’s version of the transgender Bill, to safeguard their rights, protect them against discrimination, and provide quotas in government colleges and jobs.
• The recommendations of the panel would be included in a revised version of the Bill. It depends on the Parliamentary Affairs Ministry whether to include it in their business.
• The parliamentary panel report, hailed as progressive by many within the community, had faulted the government’s Bill for its failure to address several crucial issues..
• While the August 2017 Supreme Court nine-judge bench Right to Privacy judgment had made strong observations on the need to decriminalize IPC Section 377 (which currently penalises sexual intercourse “against the order of nature”), the matter is still pending consideration before the apex court in a separate case.

What recommendations were forwarded by the panel?

• The panel’s recommendation was meant to accord legal recognition and protection from Section 377 to, if not all sexual minorities, at least transgender persons.
• It asked for provisions that provide penal action against abortions of intersex foetuses and forced surgical assignment of sex of intersex infants.
• The ministry’s proposed definition of transgender persons as ‘neither wholly male or female, a combination of female or male, neither female nor male” was criticised by the panel
• The parliamentary panel also expressed ‘dismay’ at the proposed National Council for Transgender Persons, being ‘reduced merely to an advisory body’ with no ‘effective enforcement powers’ in the Bill.