New Delhi: A day after Parliament cleared amendments to India’s transgender protection law, backlash from the community intensified, with activists and legal experts calling the amendments a rollback of identity and dignity.
The Parliament on March 25 passed amendments to the Transgender Persons (Protection of Rights) Act, 2019, removing self-identification as a basis for legal recognition of gender. The move has drawn strong criticism from the Opposition and concern among rights groups.
The backlash was swift. Two members of the National Council for Transgender Persons—Kalki Subramaniam and Rituparna Neog—resigned within hours of the bill’s passage, while Dalit trans activist Grace Banu called it a “dark day for democracy.”
“(I) cannot continue to hold a seat at a table where our collective voice has been silenced on a matter of such existential importance,” Subramaniam, the southern representative of the national council, said in a statement.
According to news reports, the Supreme Court-constituted advisory committee on transgender rights—headed by former Delhi High Court judge Asha Menon—sent the Social Justice Ministry a resolution requesting the withdrawal of the amendments. The committee said the proposed changes in the law “deny self-identification” of gender in contravention of the Supreme Court’s 2014 NALSA verdict.
The Supreme Court in its 2014 NALSA judgment held that individuals have the right to self-identify their gender, and insistence on medical interventions to determine one’s gender was “immoral and illegal.”
Amended Law Sets The Clock Back
Legal experts said the amended law sets the clock back on hard-fought rights. Senior Advocate Yashraj Singh Deora told BOOM that the amendments violate several fundamental rights including Articles 14, 19 and 21. He added that and while the law is unlikely to pass constitutional scrutiny, real and lasting damage to the lives and liberties of the transgender community would be done in the interim.
Deora said that while the NALSA verdict was a watershed moment for the transgender community, its benefits had not fully reached those it sought to protect. "The Supreme Court's judgment in the October 2025 Jane Kaushik matter set the ball rolling," he said, adding that the verdict had begun pushing for meaningful implementation of what NALSA and the 2019 Act had promised.
Though the NALSA verdict gave legal recognition to the "third gender" and the 2019 Act recognised constitutional protections for the transgender community, these remained largely rights on paper.
He further noted that pending cases seeking affirmative action for the transgender community, including the Jane Kaushik matter, may have prompted the introduction of the bill in an attempt to reduce the benefits that could flow from such litigation. He cautioned that even if the law is challenged and fails constitutional scrutiny, the process will take time. "It is not as though the courts will pass their judgment immediately after the matter is filed. The whole round of litigation will take a long time," he said.
Deora added that under Indian jurisprudence, mala fide intent cannot be attributed to legislation introduced by Parliament. This effectively gives the government cover to introduce laws of doubtful constitutional validity and leave them to be tested in court.
“So they introduce a law and let it be tested in constitutional courts. Owing to the overflowing dockets of courts, matters take time to be decided, and till then the law operates on the ground,” Deora added.
A Law That Undoes Hard-won Rights
The amendments reversed the legal recognition given to self-determined identities and narrowed the definition of a “transgender person” to include socio-cultural identities like ‘kinner’, ‘hijra’, ‘aravani’, or ‘jogta’; eunuchs, intersex individuals and those who have been forced “to assume a transgender identity by mutilation, emasculation, castration, surgical, chemical or hormonal procedures.”
The amended law removes the clause that allowed self-determined identity and mandates that a District Magistrate (DM) will issue IDs only after the applicant undergoes an examination before a medical board. It also requires medical institutions to report all gender-affirming surgeries and mandates individuals to obtain certificates following such procedures.
Jane Kaushik, a trans woman and teacher who was dismissed from schools because of her gender identity, said the government “appears to only recognise stereotypes of a transgender person”—someone who “begs, gives blessings or is a sex worker”. "Essentially the unaware, and the illiterate," she added.
Centre Against The Idea Of Pluralism: Opposition
Opposition leaders said the amendments were regressive and against the principle of "pluralism".
CPI (M) leader and Rajya Sabha MP from Kerala, John Brittas, said the passage of the amendments marked a "black day" in the nation's history and that society was "going in a full circle back to the past". "A century back," Brittas noted in the Rajya Sabha on March 25.
A ‘brahminical manuvadi’ is being imposed on this country,” he added.
Congress leader and Rajya Sabha MP Renuka Chowdhury questioned why the trans community was being asked to submit before a medical board when men and women are not required to undergo biological confirmation of their identities.
“…When we enter, we fill out a form where we are identified by our gender. All of you have been self-declared…whether you are a man or a woman. Has any medical board endorsed that? Since we are to be considered privileged, nobody can question us about our gender identity but we will question the transgender and empower moral policing of the states,” Chowdhury said.
Government Defends Amendments
Social Justice Minister Virendra Kumar defended the amendments, saying they were an attempt "to take along all segments of society."
Kumar said the amendments sought to provide "protection" to those who face discrimination on account of their biological conditions. He said the amended law would ensure the transgender community is brought into the mainstream and continues to receive legal recognition and protection.
“This bill is not merely a legal reform but a pathway to justice for those who have long faced social exclusion and discrimination due to their identity,” Kumar said.
