President Droupadi Murmu. File
| Photo Credit: ANI
President Droupadi Murmu has given her assent to the Transgender Persons (Protection of Rights) Amendment Bill, the Union Law Ministry said in a gazette notification on Monday (March 30, 2026).
The Rajya Sabha on Wednesday (March 25, 2026) passed the Bill, a day after the Lok Sabha cleared the legislation. The Opposition had demanded the Bill should be sent to a select committee of the House for further scrutiny, as it had provisions that would have an impact on the dignity of third-gender people.
Union Social Justice and Empowerment Minister Virendra Kumar, countering the Opposition’s charges against the Bill, had said it was an effort to take along all segments of the society together. He had said that the Bill would ensure protection to only those who face discrimination due to biological issues and added that transgender people will continue to get legal recognition and protection.
The government had said that the “existing vague definition” of transgender persons had made it “impossible to identify the genuine oppressed persons to whom the benefits of the Act are intended to reach”. It said the law was never meant to protect “each and every class of persons with various gender identities, self-perceived sex/gender identities or gender fluidities” and “was and is intended to protect only those who face severe social exclusion due to biological reasons for no fault of their own and no choice of their own.”
Under the 2019 Act, a transgender person is one “whose gender does not match with the gender assigned to that person at birth and includes trans-man or trans-woman (whether or not such person has undergone Sex Reassignment Surgery or hormone therapy or laser therapy or such other therapy), person with intersex variations, genderqueer and person having such socio-cultural identities as kinner, hijra, aravani and jogta.”
The proposed definition says transgender persons are people “having such socio-cultural identities as kinner, hijra, aravani, and jogta, or eunuch”, people with intersex variations, and people who have “congenital variations” compared to the “male or female development” in their “primary sexual characteristics, external genitalia, chromosomal patterns, gonadal development, endogenous hormone production or response or such other medical conditions”.
It goes on to say that any person or child who was “compelled to assume, adopt, or outwardly present a transgender identity, by mutilation, emasculation, castration, amputation, or any surgical, chemical, or hormonal procedure or otherwise” would also be included in this definition. However, it adds that this definition shall not include “persons with different sexual orientations and self-perceived sexual identities”.
Activists said the community fought to ensure that the right to self-identification was codified into law when the Act was drafted in 2019.
A day after the Rajya Sabha passed the Bill, around 140 lawyers and feminists wrote to Ms. Murmu, urging her not to grant assent to the Bill, pointing out “constitutional violations” in its provisions and “procedural infirmities” in the way it was passed. The letter was written by All-India Feminist Alliance (ALIFA), a pan-India collective of grassroots organisations, along with National Alliance for Justice, Accountability and Rights (NAJAR), a forum of lawyers and legal professionals.
Published – March 31, 2026 02:28 am IST
