NEW DELHI: Over 44 student organisations from more than 25 law schools across the country on Friday issued a statement to condemn the Transgender Persons (Protection of Rights) Amendment Bill 2026, claiming that it "undermines the dignity, autonomy and constitutional rights of transgender, intersex, and genderqueer persons."
The Bill, which was introduced in the Lok Sabha by Union Minister of Social Justice and Empowerment Virendra Kumar on March 13, seeks to give a precise definition of the term "transgender" and exclude "different sexual orientations and self-perceived sexual identities" from the proposed law's ambit.
A collective statement issued by student organisations, including Nalsar Queer Collective, Concerned Students of Government Law College, Mumbai; Concerned Students of Lloyd Law College; MNLU Queer Support Group, All India Students' Association (Faculty of Law, Delhi University), Feminist Alliance NLSIU, Human Rights Collective at NLSIU, and Jamia Queer Collective (Jamia Millia Islamia), said that the proposed amendment "threatens self-identification, transition, and chosen family structures".
"This bill effectively seeks to dilute the protections recognised in NALSA v.Union of India, which affirmed the right to self-perceived gender identity, dignity, and expression.We, the undersigned, are queer and allied student groups across Indian law schools. The proposed amendment threatens. The very existence of many trans persons, while stripping away already limited benefits.
"The amendment bill reeks of the dark colonial legacy of the now outlawed Criminal Tribes Act and Eunuchs Act that looked at transgender and other populations as problems to be regulated, controlled and eventually eradicated," it said.
The Bill underlines that a transgender person "shall not include, nor shall ever have been so included, persons with different sexual orientations and self-perceived sexual identities".
"The intent, object and purpose of the Act is and was to protect a specified class of persons socially and culturally known as transgender people who face societal discrimination of an extreme and oppressive nature.
"The purpose was and is not to protect each and every class of persons with various gender identities, self-perceived sex/gender identities or gender fluidities," the Bill says.
The statement by student organisations claimed that "the mischief behind this amendment" is evident from the Statement of Objects and Reasons itself, Paragraph 3 of which states that the purpose of the act was not to protect "self perceived sex/gender identities."
"This explicitly goes against Section 4(2) of the Act, which the Bill seeks to omit.
This provision recognised the right to self perceived gender identity.
The Statement of Objects and Reasons invokes enforcement issues arising from a purportedly 'vague definition', yet offers no substantiation on what the issues are," it said.
The statement added that despite the Act's mandate, "only 12 States and Union Territories have constituted State Transgender Welfare Boards".
"The enforcement deficit is therefore more credibly attributed to systemic failures in resources, infrastructure, and political will than to any alleged definitional ambiguity," it said.
The Bill was met with protests by trans rights activists, the Student Federation of India (SFI), the CPI(M), and NCP (SP) leader Anish Gawande, the first gay national spokesperson of a political party in the country.
It also inserts a new sub-clause to define a transperson as one having socio-cultural identities as 'kinner', 'hijra', 'aravani' and 'jogta', or eunuch, or a person with intersex variations or a person who, at birth, has a congenital variation in one or more sex characteristics as compared to male or female.
Also, any person or child who has been, by force, allurement, inducement, deceit or undue influence, either with or without consent, compelled to assume, adopt, or outwardly present a transgender identity, by mutilation, emasculation, castration, amputation, or any surgical, chemical, or hormonal procedure or otherwise, will be included in the definition.
"Provided that it shall not include, nor shall ever have been so included, persons with different sexual orientations and self-perceived sexual identities," the Bill underlines.
The student organisations also "rejected the narrowing down of the definition of transgender person under Section 2(k) to narrow cultural identities like hijras and kinnars, and physiological markers".
"It (the Bill) conflates the distinct identities of intersex and transgender peoples and excludes all transidentities that do not fall into this narrow conflated criteria.
While it includes those 'compelled' to assume a transgender identity, it denies agency to those identifying outside Section 2(k)(i).
The revised definition excludes trans men, non-binary persons, and many trans women, effectively placing a majority of the transgender population outside its scope," it said.
They claimed that the proposed amendment was introduced without any consultation with or notice to the community and that the community and activists' demands relating to sexual violence, reproductive rights, and marriage equality for transgender people remain unaddressed.
"It is a deep irony that a statute claiming to protect the rights of transgender persons, is now proposed to penalise 'coercing or alluring' people to be transgender with punishment harsher than those for protection of transgender persons.
This shows a deeply twisted view of transgender identity as a result of compulsion and coercion, rather than a representation of a person's autonomy and agency.
Preexisting criminal provisions against bodily harm squarely cover such offences," the statement said.