Purnea: Less than a week after the second round of the caste census began in Bihar, the exercise is already running into roadblocks. A Public Interest Litigation (PIL) filed in the Patna High Court has objected to transgenders being categorised as a “caste” in the census.
In her petition filed before the court Tuesday, Reshma Prasad, a 32-year-old social worker from Dostanasafar, said that allocating a code to transgender people alongside caste categories such as Yadavs, Brahmins and Bhumihars is a violation of their fundamental rights under the Constitution.
Prasad, who is also a member of the National Council for Transgender Persons, a statutory body under the Union Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment, was referring to the state government’s allocation of a caste code — ’22’ — to transgenders, triggering a row.
Categorising “transgenders as a caste, is unconstitutional and arbitrary as it is inconsistent with Articles 14, 15, 16, 19 (1)(a) and 21 as well as the judgment of the Hon’ble Supreme Court in National Legal Services Authority vs Union of India and Others (2014) 5 SCC 438 and as such arbitrary and unconstitutional,” Prasad’s petition before the court states.
Articles 14 to 16 deal with the ‘Right to Equality’, Article 19 (1) (a) talks about the ‘Freedom of Speech and Expression’, and Article 21 is about the ‘Right to Life’.
In his response to the criticism the government has faced over the move, Bihar Finance Minister Vijay Kumar Choudhary told ThePrint that the census form also had the option of “others” in the caste category. Those who had been left out should opt for this, and also specify their caste to the surveyors, he said.
“This is a simple thing that people should understand,” he said.
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‘Heinous crime’
In January, the Bihar government under Chief Minister Nitish Kumar initiated a survey to identify the various caste groups in the state.
In the first round, surveyors counted houses in all 38 districts of the state. The second round, which began from the CM’s ancestral house in Bakhtiyarpur Saturday, and will go on until 15 May, seeks details such as monthly income, gender, caste, and educational qualification of the surveyed.
The entire exercise is estimated to cost the state exchequer Rs 500 crore.
As part of the survey, castes have been categorised into 214 different groups, called caste codes. Apart from the transgender controversy, the census has also drawn criticism for having left out castes such as Marwari, Agaria and Khadia.
According to the last population census in 2011, there were 40,000 transgender people in Bihar, Reshma Prasad, quoted earlier, told ThePrint. “Transgender is not a caste but a gender. But in the caste census, we are coded as a caste. If we are given this code, then our caste that’s determined by birth will end. This is a heinous crime.”
Despite criticism, the Bihar government has yet to budge. One of the reasons for this, according to Prasad, is that Bihar’s General Administration Department (GAD) — the nodal body for conducting the survey — was finding it difficult to make changes to the 3 crore forms that were printed in January.
‘Violation of rights’
In the landmark 2014 case of the National Legal Services Authority vs Union of India, the Supreme Court had held that transgender people had the right to gender identification.
The central government’s Transgender Persons (Protection of Rights) Act, passed in 2019, states that a person recognised as ‘transgender’ shall have the right to “self-perceive” their gender identity.
Prasad’s petition mentions both of these while making her case. Her lawyer Vivek Raj told ThePrint that “considering transgender a caste is like snatching (away) their caste identity”.
“It’s wrong to give a caste code to transgender (people). Transgender can belong to Yadav, Brahmin, Bhumihar or any other caste (group),” Raj said, suggesting a separate caste survey for them. “You’re asking others their caste but you’re not asking transgenders.”
Prasad’s petition makes the same case. “A transgender can be SC (Scheduled Caste), ST (Scheduled Tribe) or belong to different castes in the forward to backward class category,” the petition says. “Putting transgender under one caste, and allotting them a separate caste code for the purpose of caste survey is discriminatory and arbitrary.”
On the other hand, the survey’s gender column has only three choices: Male, Female and Others — another move that Prasad opposes.
“Transgender should be included instead of ‘Others’,” her lawyer Raj said.
(Edited by Uttara Ramaswamy)
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