India grants equal rights to transgenders

'Third sex' can now access government education and jobs.

Trangenders in Tamil Nadu.

New Delhi:  In a historic judgement on Tuesday, the Supreme Court of India recognized transgenders as a third sex in the country, granting them equal rights in education, employment and other public spheres.

“Transgenders are also citizens of the country and have equal right to employment, education and social acceptability,” the court said.

It directed the federal government to extend them all the rights granted to those in the Other Backward Class (OBC) category, a collective term used by the Indian government to classify castes which are educationally and socially disadvantaged. According to the data of the National Sample Survey Organization, OBCs constitute 41 percent of the 1.2 billion-strong Indian population.

They are now entitled to education in government-aided schools and colleges and jobs in the government sector, while the court asked the federal government to grant them community medical facilities, voter ID cards, driving licenses and passports, and to make them part of the country’s welfare schemes.

The judgment comes as a big boost for the community, whose members were until now forced to record their identity in national records as male or female.

“The development of a country depends on human development,” said Lakshmi, a transgender. “We had been discriminated against for long but now we have been given our rights. For the first time I feel proud to be an Indian.”

Expressing concern over the discrimination and harassment that transgenders in India have suffered, the court bench, comprising Justice K S Radhakrishnan and Justice A K Sikri, said that discrimination must end.

"Recognition of transgenders as a third gender is not a social or medical issue but a human rights issue," Justice K.S. Radhakrishnan told the Supreme Court while handing down the ruling, according to AFP.

Source: ucanews.com