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The Madras High Court, on Wednesday (July 15, 2026), granted time till August 4 for the Tamil Nadu government to spell out whether it intends to provide horizontal reservation of one or two per cent for transgender candidates in all civil services and government jobs.
Second Division Bench of Justices S.M. Subramaniam and N. Senthilkumar gave the time after being informed the Government of Karnataka had provided 1% horizontal reservation for the transgender persons in all civil services and government jobs and that Tamil Nadu government could follow suit.
The submissions were made during the hearing of a writ appeal filed by the State government in 2024 against Justice V. Bhavani Subbaroyan’s (since retired) order directing the government to treat the transgender candidates as a special category entitled for horizontal reservation.
The single judge had passed the order while allowing a writ petition filed by engineering graduate R. Anushri who had been denied a Group II-A post despite participating in the Combined Civil Services Examinations conducted by the Tamil Nadu Public Service Commission (TNPSC) in 2017.
Then, the TNPSC had told the court it had considered the petitioner’s application under Scheduled Caste (women) category. Yet, her candidature could not be considered since she had scored only 121.50 marks as against the cut-off of 222 marks fixed for SC-women candidates.
Disapproving of the practice of providing vertical reservation to the transgender candidates either under the Most Backward Class (MBC) category or the Scheduled Caste or Scheduled Tribe (SC/ST) category, Justice Subbaroyan had ordered that they must necessarily be given the benefit of horizontal reservation.
She recalled the Supreme Court in National Legal Services Authority (NALSA) case in 2014 had directed the Centre and the State governments to take steps to treat the transgender as socially and educationally backward classes of citizens and extend all kinds of reservation in education and public appointments.
“This direction has been misconstrued at many times by the State governments by placing a transgender either under MBC or SC/ST category whichever is more advantageous to the transgender. This was not the intention of the honourable Supreme Court,” the judge had observed.
She had directed the government to provide exclusive horizontal reservation for the transgender candidates in government jobs by providing them benefits such as age relaxation and lesser cut-off marks than other candidates and hence the government had chosen to file the writ appeal in 2024.
The appeal was clubbed along with individual writ petitions filed by transgender activists Grace Banu Ganesan and others who had insisted upon exclusive reservation and in 2025, the then Advocate General had told the court that the Tamil Nadu government would consider the issue.
Thereafter, the batch of cases were not heard for long until they were taken up by the Division Bench led by Justice Subramaniam on Wednesday (July 15, 2026) by when there had been a change in government in the State following the Legislative Assembly election results declared in May this year.
Published – July 15, 2026 03:28 pm IST
