On 13 March, the social justice and empowerment minister Virendra Kumar tabled the Transgender Persons (Protection of Rights) Amendment Bill, 2026 in the Lok Sabha.

When I first heard this, I thought, in all my naïveté, they’re finally bringing in the changes the transgender community has been asking for. Provisions for horizontal reservations, for example, or just punishment for the different kinds of violence (against trans people) that had been clubbed together in the 2019 Act. But reality bit hard. The new Bill, instead of expanding the rights of the community, retracts almost all the rights they had won after fighting for decades.

Even amid demands by the Opposition that the Bill be referred to a select committee for wider consultation, and a plea by lawyers and activists that the President withhold assent, the regressive provisions are now the new law.

Why are these changes regressive? How do the amendments undermine or violate fundamental rights and dilute protections under Article 14 (equality before the law), Article 15 (non-discrimination), Article 19 (freedom of expression) and Article 21 (protection of life, personal liberty, bodily integrity)?

First, the new law narrows the definition of ‘transgender person’. It delegitimises self-identification and empowers medical boards and district magistrates to grant recognition. In doing this, it goes against the Supreme Court’s landmark NALSA ruling (of 2014) that recognised the constitutional rights of transgender persons and established the principle of self-identification of gender identity.

The system of graded punishments introduced in........

© National Herald