Statement Condemning Passage of Transgender Bill in India

The Professional Association for Trans Health Ireland (PATHI) stands with the trans community and our colleagues in the Association for Transgender Health in India (ATHI) following the parliamentary passage and presidential approval of the 2026 Transgender Persons (Protection of Rights) Amendment Bill without public or community consultation. This legislation introduces a restrictive definition of “transgender,” removes the right to self-identification, and subjects legal gender recognition to state-controlled medical verification, undermining trans people’s rights to self-determination and bodily autonomy. It represents a serious rollback of progress in trans rights and welfare in India since the landmark 2014 Supreme Court NALSA judgment, and is likely to have profound and harmful consequences for trans people across the country.

We are extremely concerned that this legislation gives state-appointed medical bodies the authority to determine the validity of a trans person’s identity, leading to increased medical scrutiny and bureaucratic barriers, undermining confidentiality between service-users and clinicians, and reinstating harmful gatekeeping practices long rejected by global health and human rights organisations. This shift away from self-determination toward state-imposed medical criteria for recognition is contrary to contemporary scientific and clinical consensus, including the World Health Organisation’s depathologisation of trans identities in ICD-11 and the World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH) Standards of Care Version 8, which together underpin internationally recognised, evidence-based approaches to trans health. These restrictions will deepen existing inequities, disproportionately impacting those already marginalised by caste, class, religion, disability, and other intersecting forms of oppression.

We also share concerns regarding the criminal provisions introduced within the legislation, which risk inducing fear of investigation, prosecution, and persecution among healthcare professionals providing gender-affirming care. This will further restrict trans people from accessing essential healthcare through the targeting of their care providers, kinship systems, families, and civil society organisations, while also creating conditions in which trans people themselves are more vulnerable to surveillance and criminalisation. Healthcare professionals must be enabled to provide holistic, evidence-based care based on informed consent with the support of evidence-based guidelines and training, without coercive legal constraints.

PATHI supports the trans, queer, intersex and allied movements in India calling on the Government of India to immediately halt implementation of this bill and urging the Supreme Court to intervene. We echo ATHI’s position that frameworks governing legal recognition and healthcare must be grounded in evidence, ethics, and the fundamental rights to bodily autonomy and self-determination. We further call on the Government of India to prioritise trans health, wellbeing, and autonomy, and to ensure that policy in this area is developed in genuine partnership with trans communities and grounded in international best practice.

We encourage all governments to follow the evidence, listen to healthcare professionals with expertise in trans health who are trusted by their patients, and ensure that policy development is meaningfully co-produced with trans communities and those with lived experience.