Transgender Persons (Protection of Rights) Amendment Act challenged in Supreme Court
Petitioners Laxmi Narayan Tripathi and Zainab Patel contended that the amendment took away transgender persons’ fundamental right to self-determination of gender
Barely five days after President Droupadi Murmu gave her assent to the ‘Transgender Persons (Protection of Rights) Amendment Act, 2026’, which introduced certain contentious changes in the legal framework governing the recognition, rights and protection of transgender persons, a PIL has been filed in the Supreme Court challenging its validity.
Filed by transgender persons Laxmi Narayan Tripathi and Zainab Patel, the PIL contended that the amendment has taken away transgender persons’ fundamental right to self-determination of gender.
Tripathi is the Acharya Mahamandaleshwar of the Kinnar Akhara, a Bharatanatyam dancer, author and social activist, Patel is the Director (Inclusion & Diversity) at KPMG India, and a Member of the National Council for Transgender Persons (Western Region).
The petitioner alleged that the Amendment Act caused “irreparable constitutional injury” to the fundamental rights of transgender persons guaranteed under Articles 14 (right to equality), 15 (right to non-discrimination), 19 (right to freedom of speech and expression) and 21 (right to life and liberty) of the Constitution.
They wondered if the State, through legislation, could define who a person was by substituting biological or socio-medical classifications for a person’s lived and self-perceived identity.
The PIL alleged that the amendment dismantled the principle of self-identification of gender recognised as a fundamental right by the Supreme Court in the landmark verdict in National Legal Services Authority (NALSA) versus Union of India (2014).
Referring to the provision requiring the District Magistrate to issue a certificate of identity for a transgender person only after examining the recommendation of a medical board, the petitioners said it violated transgender persons’ right to privacy.
”Parliament has, by the stroke of a legislative pen, repealed the statutory right that this Court held to be a fundamental right under Article 21. The impugned deletion does not even require elaborate constitutional analysis to expose its unconstitutionality: a provision that directly codifies a right declared fundamental by this Court cannot be omitted by ordinary legislation without violating Article 21 and the doctrine of non-retrogression of fundamental rights,” they submitted.
Passed by Parliament last month during the budget session, the law amended the Transgender Persons (Protection of Rights) Act, 2019 and redefined who qualified as a “transgender person”. It also strengthened penal provisions to address serious offences such as forced identity and bodily harm.
The amendment has been criticised by LGBTQIA+ groups on the ground that they were not consulted before the introduction of the Bill. National Council of Transgender Persons (NCTP) members Kalki Subramanium and Rituparna Neog had resigned in protest. Former Delhi High Court judge Asha Menon who headed a committee set up by the Supreme Court to examine transgender rights has asked the Centre to withdraw the Bill.
