Concerns About the Transgender Act Amendment Are Voiced by Transgender Youth

News Desk, News Nation 360: A meeting of transgender youth and their civil society supporters filled the Kolkata Press Club on Tuesday, March 17, 2026, to express their deep concerns regarding the Transgender Persons (Protection of Rights) Amendment Bill, 2026. The meeting believes that this bill is a negation of the judgment delivered by the Supreme Court in the NALSA case, wherein the right to self-identification has been upheld. Transgender Adhikar Sanghati Manch’s founder, Debangshi Biswas Chowdhury, and co-founder, Shaan Chowdhury, leading voices on this issue, point out that this bill was cleared by the Lok Sabha on March 13, 2026, by voice vote without much debate, risking exclusion for those who do not identify as either hijra or aravani. Tista Das, an activist, and Dipan Chakrabarty, an LGBTQ+ activist, expressed that this bill has the potential to reinstate gatekeeping that has been fought hard to eliminate. Accompanied by activists Baitali Ganguly and Bappaditya Mukherjee, with a message of solidarity by Alokananda Roy, this community has appealed to the Government of India to withdraw this amendment bill, ensuring that any changes that are made are in strict conformity with what has been laid out by the Supreme Court judgment of 2014, reaffirming their collective position that there should be no retreat on the issue of self-identified gender.

Pic: Krishnendu Kundu