THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: The 2024 Lok Sabha election saw an increase in the number of transgender voters in the state. Compared to 2019, there was a five-fold rise in the number of transgender community voters this time. However, this did not reflect in polling as only half of them could cast their votes.

In the 2024 election, there were a total of 367 voters from the transgender community in the state. However, only 150 of them could cast their votes, a mere 40 per cent. In 2019, the total number of transgender voters in the state was 62. However, only 22 people exercised their franchise (35.63 percent). During the five-year gap in which the number of voters rose six times, there was only a five per cent increase in the number of people who exercised their franchise.

Kerala was one of the first states which framed a policy for transgender people in 2015 when separate voter ID cards were issued nationwide for the community in 2014. “The transgender community was granted entry into parliamentary democracy very recently,” social scientist J Devika told this daily. “Hence, society has the responsibility to persuade them to vote. The community has to feel a connection with the democratic process,” she said. Incidentally, in 2019 Lok Sabha election in Kerala the first intersex candidate Aswathi Rajappan contested in Ernakulum seat. It was seen as a sign of LGBTQ individuals getting more acceptance in public sphere.

However, Syama S Parbaha, state secretary, Democratic Transgender Federation of Kerala, a wing of DYFI which formed the first political wing for transgender people in the country, said community members could not cast their votes as they failed to change their address in the voter ID card.

“Many of the community members are living in places far away from their native places. Some of them are outcasts from their families and villages. In this election even though many transgender members had applied for address change, most of them were rejected. We don’t know the real reason. There were also issues of duplicate cards in some districts,” she said.

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