NEW DELHI: The Rajya Sabha on Wednesday approved the Transgender Persons (Protection of Rights) Amendment Bill, 2026 by voice vote on Wednesday, with Social Justice and Empowerment Minister Virendra Kumar hailing it as a symbol of the government’s “overarching mission to ensure justice for long-marginalised sections of society” even as Opposition MPs questioned the government’s rush to pass the bill and demanded that it be sent to a standing committee to allow wider community consultation.
The bill was approved by the Lok Sabha on Tuesday and will now go to the Speaker for her assent before it becomes a law.
Since its introduction in the House of Representatives on March 13, the bill has been widely criticized at demonstrations, public hearings and press conferences across the country. More than 60,000 emails were sent to MPs and political representatives in a sustained campaign, and 40,000 signatures were collected for a joint statement rejecting the bill.
Kumar enumerated the work done by the ministry since the Transgender Persons (Protection of Rights) Act was promulgated in 2019, including awareness workshops, transgender job fairs, and even a helpline that was started four years ago. “We have brought this bill to ensure the dignity of the transgender community,” he said.
BJP MP Medha Vishram Kulkarni said the bill was necessary to separate “real” transgenders from “fake” people. “In Pune, we have 805 registered transgender voters, but we see a much higher number on signals and markets. I was concerned about these numbers, so I investigated and found that many people are collecting money, pretending to be transgender, and then returning home where they have families and children. There is clearly a need to protect transgender people from faking it,” she said.
“There are 1.4 lakh transgender people in Uttar Pradesh, 43,000 in Andhra Pradesh, 40,000 (each) in Maharashtra and Bihar, and 30,000 in West Bengal. Can we see natural selection in these numbers? (…) Based on these statistics, doubts can be raised about human intervention. Are young people forcibly given transgender identities? Are people making fake identities for the benefit of jobs? “This needs to be discussed.”
Her party colleague, Dr Parmar Jashvantsinh Salamsinh, said gender differences and differences in sexual development (DSD) had been introduced into the definition of transgender people in order to provide an observable and verifiable basis for certification.
“The birth certificate is prepared from physical verification at the time of birth, which can be observed and verified. The doctor’s professional evaluation then becomes a legal document,” Salamsinh said.
He added: “I am not saying that a person’s inner experience is wrong or that his feelings are invalid. Identity is a deeply felt experience. But if the state has to issue certificates, legal rights and reservation benefits, it must work in the field of verification.”
International human rights frameworks, including the United Nations, make a clear distinction between transgender identity and biological sex characteristics, which is widely considered the norm in international standards of care for the transgender community.
Of the 19 parliamentarians who discussed the bill for four hours, 13 were from opposition parties including the Indian National Congress, All India Trinamool Congress, Shiv Sena (Uddhav Pal Thackeray), Samajwadi Party, Rashtriya Janata Dal, Aam Aadmi Party, Jharkhand Mukti Morcha and Indian Muslim League.
“I stand here in agony and pain before you. I am sure that even if this bill is passed by a majority of the government, the Supreme Court will strike it down as it violates Articles 14, 15, 19 and 21 of the Indian Constitution, and all our rights to freedom, self-determination, privacy and dignity,” KDP MP Tiruchi Siva said.
Siva introduced a private member’s bill called the Transgender Persons’ Rights Bill in the Rajya Sabha in 2014, which was widely celebrated for giving dignity and ensuring rights and benefits to the community. It was also the first private member’s bill to be passed in any House since independence.
“Society is already abusing them at every sign, and now [the government] It will put them behind bars by criminalizing them. Guru Chila Parampara is pivotal to many transgender communities. “This bill allows the teacher to be put behind bars,” Siva said.
Presenting a list of 15 amendments to the bill, including removing the medical board to certify transgender identity and reviewing penal provisions against people found to have “attracted” or “induced” someone to assume a transgender identity, Congresswoman Renuka Chowdhury said: “This bill in its current form will inject hatred and ignorance towards transgender people into the society.”
“We have never had to go to a medical board to certify our gender, so why should a transgender adult be asked to go? This is not an act to protect their rights, but to dilute them,” said Sandeep Pathak of the Aam Aadmi Party, adding that out of 34,000 applications for certification under the 2019 law, 5,566 applications were rejected.
Raising concerns over the current certification process, Shiv Sena (UBT) MP Priyanka Chaturvedi asked, “On what basis were they rejected? What is the redress mechanism for transgender people?”
Emphasizing that the right to self-determination of gender mentioned in the 2019 Act, which was based on a Supreme Court ruling, placed India in a select international list where this specific right was granted. “Now this has been undone,” she said.
Although the Seva Bill received cross-party support, the government did not support the bill and said it would bring a new bill. It formed a standing committee that conducted wide-ranging consultations with the community and stakeholders such as medical professionals, support service providers, parents, teachers and others, and submitted a report to Parliament. In the same year, the Supreme Court issued the NALSA et al. v. Union of India ruling that enshrined self-determination as the basis of gender identity. Two years later, the government introduced a draft law defining transgender people as “neither male nor female,” which led to a backlash. The ministry withdrew the draft law and submitted another one a year later, which was eventually amended and passed in 2019.
On Wednesday, retired Justice Asha Menon, who chairs the advisory committee set up by the Supreme Court last year to consider strengthening regulations in place under the Transgender Persons (Protection of Rights) Act, 2019, wrote a letter to the minister asking him to withdraw the bill.
“By restricting transgenders to congenital differences, those who do not identify with their sex assigned at birth will not be able to access gender reconfirmation surgeries. They cannot access the benefits of various schemes offered by governments at central and state levels meant for transgenders due to inability to obtain certification under Article 6 and Article 7 due to anomalies in the proposed amendments. Insisting on reporting of surgeries is violative of privacy and its purpose is unclear. The amendments to penalties are unnecessary as the existing provisions in the BNSS The Juvenile Justice (Care and Protection of Children) Act, 2015 is sufficient.”
