Transpersons’ plea will be considered sympathetically: A-G

The Madras High Court on Thursday recorded the submission of Advocate-General R. Shunmugasundaram that the State authorities would think about a plea to distribute COVID-19 money reduction of ₹4,000 to the transgender neighborhood, sympathetically, with out insisting on ration playing cards.

Chief Justice Sanjib Banerjee and Justice Senthilkumar Ramamoorthy recorded the submission made in the course of the listening to of a public curiosity litigation petition filed by transgender rights activist Grace Banu and adjourned the case to June 7 for the federal government to report the progress made on this regard.

In an affidavit filed by means of her counsel C. Prabhu, the litigant mentioned there have been greater than 50,000 transpersons within the State, although the obtainable authorities information confirmed that there have been solely 11,449 transpersons, of whom 2,541 had been issued ration playing cards.

Pointing out that the federal government had introduced a COVID-19 money reduction of ₹4,000 to all rice ration cardholders, and had begun distributing the primary instalment of ₹2,000 to every of them, the petitioner mentioned the restriction that the reduction would be given solely to ration cardholders would result in exclusion of many transpersons who didn’t possess ration playing cards because of numerous causes, together with a delay on the a part of the Civil Supplies Department in issuing the playing cards.

The petitioner recalled that in the course of the first wave of COVID-19, the State had distributed money reduction of ₹1,000 to not simply rice ration cardholders, but additionally transpersons with out ration playing cards.

The litigant added that hardly any transpersons had been issued id playing cards, ever for the reason that Transgender Persons (Protection of Rights) Act of 2019 and the statutory guidelines framed thereunder in 2020 had come into drive.

Even earlier than the 2019 enactment and the statutory guidelines got here into drive, solely 6,553 transpersons had been issued id playing cards within the State, and the others couldn’t be anticipated to acquire ration playing cards with out producing id playing cards, the petitioner mentioned.

It was additionally delivered to the discover of the courtroom that transpersons had a number of doubts over COVID-19 vaccination since they had been both on hormone remedy or present process intercourse reassignment surgical procedures.

Therefore, consciousness programmes should be carried out to dispel doubts on vaccines, the litigant mentioned.