The Rajasthan government has now told a Bench of the Rajasthan High Court that the extent and structure of reservation policy are matters of executive and legislative competence and that the Court cannot create a new class of reservation in a plea seeking horizontal quotas for transgender people in public education and employment in the State.
A Jodhpur Bench of the Rajasthan High Court is currently hearing a plea by Ganga Kumari, challenging a 2023 circular of the State government that placed transgender people within the Other Backward Classes list of the State in a bid to provide quotas to them. Ms. Kumari has argued that this classification fails to account for the “unique status” of transgender people as socially and educationally backward citizens and is counter-productive.
Responding to the petition on behalf of the Social Justice Department’s Secretary, Additional Advocate General Praveen Khandelwal, has argued that the petitioners had “failed to demonstrate by any cogent material or statistical data that providing a separate horizontal reservation for transgender persons would lead to actual benefit in terms of proportionate representation under the existing roster system”.
The 2023 circular, which has now been challenged, was issued after Ms. Kumari had approached the High Court for transgender reservation, citing the Supreme Court of India’s 2014 NALSA judgement. A Double Bench of the High Court had in 2022 directed that reservation be provided to transgender persons without specifying what the nature of this reservation would be.
The State government in the present case, has now said that it has complied with the High Court’s 2022 order and accordingly placed transgender persons within the OBC list of the State, as this order did not specifically direct horizontal reservation. Further, in the affidavit filed last month, it has stressed that courts cannot create a new class for reservation without statutory framework.
In the affidavit, the State government has gone on to say that it has already extended multiple welfare schemes and skill development programmes for the transgender community considering the hardships faced by them. To substantiate this, the State government said that 44 transgender people had been trained in skill development programme, of which 22 were provided employment.
According to the 2011 Census, there were over 16,000 transgender people in the State of Rajasthan. Ms. Kumari has submitted in her petition that currently, the estimated population of transgender persons is about 23,000 in the State. However, responding to these figures, the State government has said that no independent population count had been done in Rajasthan for transgender persons.
In the petition, through Advocates Vivek Mathur and Ivan, Ms. Kumari has submitted that classifying transgender people within OBCs had failed to account for transgender people from General, SC, or ST backgrounds. Further, the petition pointed out that if the current classification were to stand, an OBC transgender person would not be able to avail benefits of being both OBC and transgender and would have to choose either.
Published – October 10, 2025 02:36 am IST
