Kerala High Court is now pushing for equal rights for transgenders coming as a relief to the members of the community in the state.
It recently issued a ruling that said that a person cannot be denied basic rights just because they are a transgender. This had been issued by Justice Devan Ramachandran in a recent case.
The petitioner Hina Hanifa, a trans woman, had challenged NCC’s exclusion of those belonging to the transgender community. She is a student of the Thiruvananthapuram University College. An interim order to include her in the program had also been sought by Raghul Sudheesh, her counsel.
During the hearing of the case, the petitioner was asked to be excluded in the enrollment process of the NCC unit, as she was a transgender despite identifying as a woman. The council from the central government’s end argued that the petitioner had identified as male until the age of 21 ever since birth. Post this, he had undergone surgery to reassign his gender to female. But Section 6 of the National Cadet Corps Act only granted enrollment to male and female genders.
Following this, the petitioners submitted the Transgender Persons (Protection of Rights) Act, which banned discrimination of any kind against the transgender community. The petitioner later also filed a case in the court seeking an amendment of the criteria.