New Delhi: Dr Vignesh Dhananjayan, whose chosen name is Gargi, was born in a village on the Tamil Nadu-Andhra Pradesh border and was assigned “male” at birth. She realised her gender identity and expression as a transgender person when she was around 10 years old. At just 25 years of age, Gargi is now one of the few transgender doctors in India.
Dr Gargi is also one of the few transgender doctors who have taken their fight for reservations in post-graduate courses in medical education to the courts.
In a petition filed earlier this month in the Delhi High Court, Dr Gargi has challenged an admission notification issued by the All India Institute of Medical Sciences, New Delhi, and a subsequent prospectus for conducting the Institute of National Importance Combined Entrance Test (INI-CET) for admissions to PG courses in the July 2025 session.
INI-CET is conducted by AIIMS, Delhi, for admissions to postgraduate medical courses (MD, MS, DM, MCh, MDS) at 23 designated institutes of national importance, including 19 AIIMS.
Dr Gargi’s petition points out that the notice does not outline any scheme or policy for horizontal reservations for transgender persons. Horizontal reservation refers to quotas being set aside for certain disadvantaged groups, like women or persons with disabilities, within each vertical reservation category such as the Scheduled Castes, Scheduled Tribes, and Other Backward Classes. So the horizontal quota is applied separately to each of the vertical categories.
Dr Gargi has, therefore, demanded that the admission notice be declared unconstitutional. She is also demanding a fresh notice which provides compartmentalised horizontal reservation for transgender persons by reserving 1 percent of seats for such persons in each vertical category.
“This is a personal battle for me … coming from my village to here feels like I’ve crossed mountains to achieve the same things that were easily accessible to a lot of my peers. Even during my internship, the kind of workplace harassment I faced was insurmountable,” Dr Gargi told ThePrint.
Her petition was mentioned by her lawyer Rohin Bhatt on 9 April but the Delhi High Court refused an urgent hearing.
Another petition was filed last month in the Andhra Pradesh High Court, challenging the notice for the National Eligibility-cum-Entrance test for PG courses (NEET-PG 2024), pointing to the lack of reservation for transgender persons.
This petition was filed by Dr B. Venkata Bhagiradhy Mythrraa, demanding horizontal reservation for transgender persons.
Back in 2023, the Telangana High Court had come to the aid of Dr Koyyala Ruth John Paul, directing the authorities to extend the benefit of third gender status in addition to her Scheduled Caste status while considering her admission in any of the courses either under central quota or under state quota for NEET-PG 2023, in a manner beneficial to her.
The same high court passed a similar interim order in 2023 for Dr Praachi Rathod, directing authorities to extend the benefit of third gender status to her in addition to her Scheduled Tribe status while considering her admission in the third round of counselling.
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‘A doctor for all’
Dr Gargi is currently a fifth-year student, working as an intern in a medical college in Tamil Nadu. Having endured years of bullying, Dr Gargi is a first-generation doctor. She is now determined to pursue post-graduate studies—for a stable future, to ensure representation for transgender persons in medicine, and to help the community as well.
She told ThePrint that she doesn’t agree with the stereotype that a doctor from the trans community may just focus on their own community and may not specialise.
“Yes, I want to treat the trans/queer community, but I also want to be of help to everyone regardless of their gender and sexual orientation … my passion is to serve everyone, and as an MBBS-only (doctor), I can do very little,” they said.
The Supreme Court in 2014, in what is popularly known as the NALSA judgment, recognised the fundamental rights of transgender persons under the Constitution of India, including the right to self-determination of gender identity.
The 2014 order had directed the Centre and state governments to take steps to treat them as socially and educationally backward classes of citizens, and to extend all kinds of reservation in cases of admissions in educational institutions and for public appointments.
However, Dr Gargi’s lawyer advocate Rohin Bhatt believes the one thing the NALSA judgment got wrong was that it “mistook” caste for gender, and provides for treating transgender persons as socially and educationally backward classes (SEBCs) of citizens.
“The very mandate of the Constitution is clear. The right to reservation is a fundamental right within Articles 15(4) and 16(4), as far as public employment is concerned … in my view, the NALSA judgment provides enough room to provide horizontal reservations,” he told ThePrint. He added that the “courts must engage critically with the graded inequality that transgender people face”.
Several critics from within and outside the transgender community have often criticised the clubbing of transgender persons within the SEBC category, demanding a separate categorisation for the community in terms of quota. Among other things, they argue that this does not recognise the distinct forms of discrimination faced by the community, and fails to recognise the intersectional nature of oppression that transgender persons who also belong to marginalised groups like Dalits or Adivasis may face.
Transgender rights activist Vyjayanti Vasanta Mogli is also of the opinion that the NALSA judgment is “flawed” in terms of reservations, because it assumes that transgender persons can all be bracketed under the SEBC category.
“At the end of it, social justice is meted out better if people are compensated a little more than what they can get out of an oceanic OBC pool,” she told ThePrint.
Adding, “If there’s a partition suit in property, ultimately if there’s a certain way of partitioning which grants them all less as compared to another way which grants them all a little more, they would prefer the latter over the former. The latter is what horizontal reservation does. Technically, statistically, empirically, they get more only through horizontal reservation.”
‘A home on 40th floor’
The petitions by transgender doctors for reservation in PG courses are the latest in a string of such pleas in different high courts for quota for transgender persons in different professions. For instance, following a petition filed in the Karnataka High Court, the state government in July 2021 amended its rules to grant 1 percent horizontal reservation for transgender persons in civil services.
“The courts should ask the government as to why appropriate governments took 11 years to bring these provisions. Look at the disparity and asymmetry to access knowledge and resources for transgender persons,” Mogli asserted.
Mogli pointed out that the Karnataka petition pertained to employment, and not education.
“Figuratively, that’s like being given a home on the 40th floor, with no staircase or lift. So, of course, it’s on our name, but how do we go there?” she asked.
Advocate Bhatt pointed out that Section 8(1) of the Transgender Persons (Protection of Rights) Act, 2019, states that the appropriate government shall take steps to secure full and effective participation of transgender persons and their inclusion in society.
Section 13 of the Act also says that every educational institution funded or recognised by the government shall provide “inclusive education… to transgender persons without discrimination”.
“The fact that several transgender persons across the country have had to approach the courts, not just for medical education but also legal education, to seek what are their fundamental rights, is a sad state of affairs,” Bhatt said.
(Edited by Nida Fatima Siddiqui)
Gender, caste, and religion should not be the basis of reservation. The deserving poor in the merit list should be given 100% scholarships. Such people should be allowed to emigrate only after repaying the scholarships with interest. Reservation should be abolished.