New Delhi: Sweeping amendments have been proposed to India’s landmark transgender rights legislation, including a narrowed legal definition of a transgender person, and stringent new criminal penalties such as life imprisonment for those who abduct and forcibly alter the identities of adults and children.
Social Justice and Empowerment Minister Virendra Kumar introduced the Transgender Persons (Protection of Rights) Amendment Bill, 2026, in the Lok Sabha Friday.
It seeks to amend the parent legislation, Transgender Persons (Protection of Rights) Act, 2019, which, for the first time, gave statutory recognition and legal protections to transgender individuals in India.
The 2019 Act was widely seen as a hard-won, if imperfect, legislative milestone, following years of activism and a historic Supreme Court judgment. It came into force after the Supreme Court’s landmark judgment in response to the 2014 National Legal Services Authority vs Union of India petition. In that judgment, the court recognised transgender persons as a third gender and directed the government to extend reservations and protections to them.
The legislation took several years to pass, and its journey was contentious. An earlier version of the bill in 2016 had faced fierce protests from the transgender community for requiring a district magistrate to certify a person’s transgender identity, effectively giving a government official power over self-identification.
When the 2019 Act finally passed, its definition of a ‘transgender person’ was deliberately broad and inclusive. It defined the term as someone whose gender does not match the gender assigned to them at birth, encompassing trans-men, trans-women—whether or not they had undergone surgery—persons with intersex variations, genderqueer individuals, and those with socio-cultural identities such as kinner, hijra, aravani and jogta, which are colloquial terms used for the third gender.
Critically, the law also explicitly recognised the right to self-perceived gender identity under Section 4(2).
The Act also prohibited discrimination in education, employment, healthcare and access to public spaces; barred the separation of transgender persons from their families; and made various forms of abuse punishable by up to two years in prison. Further, it provided for the National Council for Transgender Persons to advise the government on policy.
Speaking to ThePrint about the amendments to the parent Act proposed Friday, Dr Swapnil Tripathi, Lead of Charkha (Centre for Constitutional Law) at the Vidhi Centre for Legal Policy, offered a divided assessment.
On the revised definition of transgender persons, he said that it “largely relies on medical and biological characteristics as qualifiers”—chromosomal patterns, gonadal development, hormonal production—and to that extent “appears to depart from the reasoning adopted by the Supreme Court in NALSA”.
The 2014 judgment, he noted, recognised self-determination of gender as an integral component of personal autonomy under Article 21, emphasising a “psychological test” that accords primacy to an individual’s own perception of their identity, rather than biological attributes.
The bill’s proviso—explicitly excluding persons with self-perceived sexual identities—could invite constitutional scrutiny on the ground that it is inconsistent with NALSA and the broader protection of personal autonomy the court had articulated, Tripathi said.
On the penal side, however, Tripathi’s assessment was more positive.
The focus on specific offences such as kidnapping with an intent to force a transgender identity and compelling transgender presentation for exploitation, along with the aggravated provisions in cases involving children, was a “welcome development”, he said.
He noted that currently, authorities charged accused persons under “a range of broad and varying statutory provisions” across different laws. The new framework, with its graded punishments and clearer definitions, would make enforcement more effective, he noted. This amendment, he said, could be seen as “partially realising the constitutional concerns identified by the Supreme Court in NALSA”, where the court had acknowledged the pervasive marginalisation and violence faced by transgender persons and emphasised the need for stronger legal protection.
A narrower definition
The most consequential change proposed by the 2026 amendment is a major revision in the definition of ‘transgender person’.
The bill restricts the definition to two categories—individuals with specific socio-cultural identities (kinner, hijra, aravani, jogta, or eunuch), and persons born with medically recognised intersex variations. These variations include differences in primary sexual characteristics, external genitalia, chromosomal patterns, gonadal development, or endogenous hormone production.
The bill introduces a second category of individuals who were compelled through force, allurements, inducement, deceit, or undue influence to assume a transgender identity through mutilation, castration, hormonal procedures, or other means. with or without consent. This is understood to aim at encompassing victims of trafficking and coerced identity change—a documented pattern of abuse in parts of South Asia.
The bill’s statement of objects and reasons is direct about what it seeks to exclude. It explicitly states that protection under the law is intended only for those who face severe social exclusion due to any biological reasons. It clarifies that the definition shall not include and should never have included persons with different sexual orientations or self-perceived sexual identities.
The right to self-perceived gender identity, currently enshrined in Section 4(2) of the parent law, is proposed to be deleted entirely.
New criminal architecture
A separate and significant portion of the bill introduces a new penal architecture under Section 18 of the parent Act.
The parent law prescribed a maximum of two years in prison for offences against transgender persons, ranging from forced labour and denial of access to public spaces to physical, sexual and economic abuse. Critics had long argued this was inadequate.
The amendment retains the same two-year ceiling for punishment for these offences.
However, it adds a graded set of punishments for offences, which it describes as a documented pattern of abduction, bodily harm, and coerced identity change.
Under the proposed law, the kidnapping of an adult and causing grievous hurt through mutilation, castration, hormonal or surgical procedures, with the intent to force them to assume a transgender identity, would be punishable with rigorous imprisonment of at least ten years, extendable to life, and a minimum fine of Rs two lakh.
For the same offences involving children, the punishment is harsher, including life imprisonment and a minimum fine of Rs five lakh.
Forcing any person, transgender or not, to present as transgender through force or deception, and then exploiting them through begging or servitude, will result in five to ten years of rigorous imprisonment.
For children, the punishment range for this offence would increase to ten to fourteen years.
The bill notes that while scattered provisions of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita, 2023, and the Juvenile Justice (Care and Protection of Children) Act, 2015, address individual elements of these offences, no existing provision treats the combination of abduction, permanent bodily harm, and coerced identity change as a unified, single criminal offence.
Certificates & medical boards
Beyond the definition and penal changes, the bill makes several procedural amendments.
It introduces a new medical ‘authority’—a medical board headed by a chief medical officer or deputy chief medical officer—which the district magistrate must consult before issuing identity certificates to transgender persons.
This adds a medical gatekeeping layer to a process that activists had already criticised as bureaucratically burdensome under the 2019 Act.
On the empowerment side, the bill proposes that a person issued an identity certificate shall have the right to change their first name on their birth certificates and all other official documents—a practical measure addressing a long-standing gap in the parent law.
Medical institutions performing gender-affirming surgeries would also be required to report details of such patients to the relevant district magistrate and the newly created medical authority.
The composition of the National Council for Transgender Persons would also change. State government representatives must be at least at the rank of director and drawn by rotation from the North, South, East, West and North-East regions.
(Edited by Madhurita Goswami)