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New system allows transgender persons to identify their gender

Newly-introduced online ID card process ensures diversity of transgender community is respected.

Thiruvananthapuram: Transgender persons will be able to identify themselves as man, woman, transman or transwoman, that is the gender they prefer when using the newly introduced online application process for transgender ID cards.

This was made possible by a High Court judgment in July on a writ petition by an LGBTQIA+ organisation called Queerala and Zara Sheikha, a woman by trans-experience, challenging the previously existing process.

Until that time, all transgender persons could only identify themselves as ‘transgender’ in the ID cards, even as some would want to be called a man or a woman.

Though extremely happy, this should have happened right in the beginning, says Vihaan Peethambar, trans activist and Queerala Board member.

“Compared to other states, Kerala has a competent social justice department and an open mindset to have dialogues on community issues," Peethambar said.

"We should have been able to leverage on this and not wait for a court order to push this. The department can take out an important lesson from this. In the planning stages of an initiative, they need to make sure they are heeding to wholesome voices of the community and not restricting themselves to a few voices of the community."

He had written letters to the social justice department and approached the State Transgender Justice Board. It didn’t help when some of the top officials in the department did not understand the need for self-identification.

Former social justice director P. B. Nooh had asked DC then, “If a transgender person is called a male, or a female, then why issue a transgender ID card?”

That this was in spirit against the Supreme Court NALSA judgment as well as the transgender policy escaped some of the prominent voices in the transgender community as well.

Now, the online process ensures that the diversity of the transgender community is respected.

It has two rounds of verification, according to state TG cell project officer Syama S. Prabha.

“The application documents sent to social justice directorate will be verified by the TG cell. Then it will be sent to social justice district offices, where district TG justice committees will screen the applications,” she says.

( Source : Deccan Chronicle. )
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