Both houses of the Indian parliament have passed a controversial new bill affecting transgender rights in the country, the Lok Sabha on 24 March 2025 and the Rajya Sabha on 25 March 2025, sparking a public outcry.
The amendments were immediately criticised as a significant rollback of transgender rights.
“This bill is not protection. It is a rollback of dignity, equality, and the right to self-identification,” the rights group Hindus for Human Rights said in a statement.
“A government cannot claim to protect transgender people while refusing to listen to them.”
Trans activist Grace Banu told a press conference in Delhi that the community was seeking “recognition without invasion” and “rights without humiliation”.
The law narrows who is legally recognised as transgender, removes explicit protections for various gender identities, and contradicts the principles established by the Supreme Court of India in its 2014 NALSA judgment, it said.
It said the amendment was passed without consultation with transgender communities.
The legislation, known as the Transgender Persons (Protection of Rights) Amendment Bill 2026, will become law following presidential assent.
Although legal protections were introduced in 2019, many transgender people have continued to face discrimination. Critics argue that the new amendments further undermine access to healthcare and education.
Several transgender campaigners have spoken out against the changes. Laxmi Narayan Tripathi told The Hindu: “It has shattered our identity.”
Opposition Congress Party leader Rahul Gandhi called the move “a brazen attack” on the constitutional rights and identity of transgender people.
“This regressive bill … strips transgender people of their ability to self identify, violating a Supreme Court judgement,” Gandhi said via X.
“[It] forces trans people to undergo dehumanizing examinations by a medical board [and[ introduces criminal penalties and surveillance without safeguards,” he wrote.
The BJP government hasn’t consulted the trans community and brought a bill which stigmatises rather than protects them, Gandhi said, adding that India has “a rich history” of honouring trans people.
The Congress Party unequivocally opposes this Bill, he added.
The move reflects a broader global trend of backsliding on transgender rights in recent years, including in countries such as the United Kingdom.
The move sparked a backlash on social media, with one commenter on Reddit calling it “a horrible bill”.
Since Virendra Kumar, the minister of social justice and empowerment, tabled the Transgender Persons (Protection of Rights) Amendment Bill in the Lok Sabha on 13 March 2026, the trans, non-binary, and intersex communities have been seized with panic and fear, said the article, which was signed by journalist Mridula Chari.
“This is no ordinary amendment,” Chari wrote. “It expressly sets the legal framework for lakhs [100s of thousands] of trans, non-binary and intersex people back by decades.”
“It aims not just to withdraw the rights and recognitions people have enjoyed under the law for a mere seven years, but also to erase them as if they never existed,” they said.
Satya Rai Nagpaul, founder of health education NGO Sampoorna, accused the government of “existential panic.”
“This mindset isn’t just in this bill — it exists in national policy,” Nagpaul said.
“Disenfranchisement and delegitimisation are happening everywhere.”
A Supreme Court-appointed panel led by Justice Asha Menon has called for the amendment to be withdrawn, citing violation of the NALSA judgment.
India’s LGBTQIA+ watchdog Yes We Exist agreed.
“We reject this Bill entirely,” the group said via Instagram. “We condemn this dangerous practice of bulldozing bills without consultation and consensus. This Bill helps no one.”
“We firmly stand with our community,” the statement said. “The government cannot decide who we are. We will continue to fight against this law and have our rights restored.”