Undoing a decade of progress for transgender rights in India

A Bill has been proposed in India’s lower house of Parliament that strikes at the core of transgender people’s right to bodily autonomy and privacy as guaranteed by the Supreme Court of India in a landmark 2014 judgment, National Legal Services Authority (NALSA) v. Union of India. Activists have therefore called the bill “unconstitutional” and “dangerous,” and as it is expected to soon become law, it has also heightened concerns and uncertainty about its impact.

Read more: How India’s higher judiciary is steadily advancing transgender rights amid global anti-trans backlash

Proposed amendments to existing legislation

The Transgender Persons (Protection of Rights) Amendment Bill, 2026 (“2026 Bill”) has been newly introduced in India’s ongoing Parliamentary Budget Session, proposing to amend the Transgender Persons (Protection of Rights) Act, 2019 (“2019 Act”), much to the chagrin of India’s transgender community.

According to activists, the proposed amendments to the 2019 Act threaten trans people’s safety and privacy in two ways. First, they narrow the definition of who counts as “transgender” by effectively excluding a wide range of identities, including, but not limited to, transgender men, non-binary and gender-fluid persons who do not fit into rigid gender categories, as well as many intersex and trans-feminine identities. Second, the amendments delete the provision of the law that explicitly guaranteed, within the text of the statute, the right to self-identification of one’s gender. Instead of self-identification, a person would now need to provide medical proof of gender change through surgery and submit a certificate issued by the Medical Superintendent or Chief Medical Officer to the District Magistrate, who, upon being satisfied with the correctness of the certificate, may issue a certificate indicating a change in gender.

Gatekeeping gender identity

The amendments also envision the creation of “medical boards” to certify gender identity. These boards are to be headed by a Chief Medical Officer or a Deputy Chief Medical Officer, and mandate that the District Magistrate issue certificates only after examining the recommendation of this board. The provision also allows the District Magistrate to seek the assistance of other medical experts if required.

Comics channel Sanitary Panels weighs in:

#TransRights #RejectTransBill2026 pic.twitter.com/bsQERim8Qj

— Sanitary Panels (@sanitarypanels) March 16, 2026

These provisions pathologize transgender identity by subjecting it to mandatory medical certification and raise serious concerns about privacy. It should be noted that the 2019 law and its accompanying Rules did not mandate medical or physical intervention. Instead, they allowed transgender persons to directly apply for recognition based on their self-perceived gender identity. If they later chose to undergo surgery to change their gender, they may apply for revised documentation. The proposed amendments fundamentally alter this process by inserting a medical board at the very beginning of the recognition procedure, effectively eliminating the possibility of recognition based solely on self-perception.

Furthermore, the inclusion of a provision allowing the District Magistrate to seek the assistance of other medical experts raises additional privacy concerns. By granting such broad discretion, the law risks allowing the District Magistrate to discuss an applicant’s case with multiple medical professionals. It does not specify that these consultations must take place confidentially, nor that they require the informed consent of the individual concerned.  But these concerns are all secondary. Even if confidential, consent-centered, and trans-affirmative procedures were to be put in place, the very requirement of a medical board for certification of gender identity strikes at the core of the Supreme Court’s ruling in NALSA and violates it.

Criminal offences introduced: protection or policing?

Under the 2019 Act, Section 18 criminalized specific acts such as forcing a transgender person into bonded labor, denying access to public places, forcing them to leave their residence, or subjecting them to physical, sexual, verbal, emotional, or economic abuse. The proposed amendments retain these offences without any attempt at rationalizing the disproportionately low punishments for certain offences, such as sexual abuse committed against a transgender person, when compared to punishments provided under India’s general criminal law. On the other hand, it introduces new provisions to criminalize acts such as forced labor, employment in begging or solicitation, kidnapping and grievous hurt or injury inflicted through compelling a person to “assume, adopt, or outwardly present a transgender identity” or even to “dress, present, or conduct themselves outwardly as a transgender person” through allurement, inducement, deception, force, or the like.

Outwardly, these insertions may appear to provide a remedy against aggravated forms of coercion. However, the conduct that falls within their scope remains equivocal. It is wholly unclear what the law perceives to be the “presenting, dressing or conducting” of oneself as transgender, especially in the context of the newly medicalized definition. These terms are not defined or characterised, and remain open to (mis)interpretation by the police and State.

The line is blurred between situations involving actual violence or abduction, and those involving voluntary co-opting into community networks and norms (such as within hijra gharanas — traditional kinship-based community structures among transgender persons in South Asia). This gives rise to concern regarding the misuse of criminal law in contexts where transgender persons receive shelter and support from their community, especially in the absence of support from the state, their natal families, and larger society. The further invocation of criminal law appears to have been made without conducting any stakeholder consultations or impact assessments of the law’s social, fiscal, and judicial implications.

There is a lack of evidence available in the public domain indicating the necessity of such criminalization. It is thus unclear whether the problem that the State seeks to solve is a problem that currently exists.

A comparable insertion was controversially proposed in the 2019 Act, and then ultimately dropped. In the broader context of the 2026 Bill, these proposed introductions further the colonial narrative of viewing expressions of transgender identity with suspicion, especially where they occur outside narrowly defined categories recognized by the law. This possibility has contributed to fears that provisions intended as protective measures could instead be used to police identity and community relationships, rather than to prevent genuine harm.

The Way Forward

The Bill has not yet been signed into law, meaning there are several ways it could proceed. The Bill could be passed by the lower house of Parliament, withdrawn by the government, or sent to what is known as a Parliamentary Standing Committee — a group of Members of Parliament that would examine the proposed law in detail and may also consult experts and community stakeholders before submitting a final report with recommendations.

Activist Prakhy posts in X (formerly Twitter)

Today, at the press conference in Delhi regarding the Transgender Amendment Bill 2026. Hope we can collectivise and resist. #Nogoingback #Rejecttransbill2026 #Rejectbill79 pic.twitter.com/wyH1a4JaC5

— prakhy (@prakkhy) March 16, 2026

Another possible path is litigation through the courts after the Bill gets signed into law. However, petitions challenging several provisions of the Transgender Persons (Protection of Rights) Act, 2019, have already been pending before the Supreme Court since 2019, which means that relief through this route, if it comes at all, is unlikely to be immediate.

In the meantime, activists and members of the transgender community remain committed to ensuring that the Bill is withdrawn, allowing the law to return to the first principles outlined by the Supreme Court in NALSA.

Note: All views are personal and do not necessarily reflect the views of the author’s employers.