Trendsetters! Balco Opens Doors For Transgender Community, Hires 4 Members In Chhattisgarh
GUWAHATI: The transgender community of Guwahati has claimed that of the over 2,000 voters from the community, only 26 names have been registered under the third gender category. A majority of them are added in the male and female categories. This was revealed in the final electoral roll of Guwahati, which was published by the Election Branch of the District Administration of Kamrup Metro on Saturday, March 5.
The community representative Swati Bidha Baruah said that most members have failed to change their documents to the third gender due to the negligence and lackadaisical attitude of authorities to facilitate the process of conversion of the documents. As per the electoral rolls, Guwahati has a total of 7,97,807 voters. Of this figure, 3,97,128 are males and 4,00,654 are females; and 26 voters of them are from the third gender.
Swati Bidhan Baruah, Associate Vice-Chairperson of the Assam State Transgender Welfare Board spoke to G Plus about the issue and said, “Naming just 26 persons in the third gender category in the electoral roll is not sufficient. An entire exercise has to be taken up by the authorities to correct the names of the transgender persons. Only a few have managed to change their names in the concerned documents, which is not sufficient.”
Baruah further said that most transgender children when born are registered either as a male or a female. Over the years, the given male or female name gets registered in a number of documents like educational certificates, bank documents, etc. When the person chooses to change the name, the new one needs to be updated in all the previous documents which is a tedious task.
“When a person says that he/she is a transgender, the same has to be accepted irrespective of the documents, which remain uncorrected. In this regard, naming just 26 in the electoral roll is not very convenient for the community,” said Baruah.
The Transgender Persons (Protection of Rights) Act of 2020 has granted the right to “self-perceived gender identity” to transgender individuals. The same was also granted by the Supreme Court in 2014 in the National Legal Services Authority v. Union of India case.
“There are over 2,000 transgender voters in Guwahati. But due to the non-correction of documents, most are categorised either as male or female. The authorities need to work actively to make the necessary changes as most transgender persons are not even aware of the necessity to change their names in the documents due to a lack of education. The community needs to be sensitised,” she added.
Baruah further alleged that the Election Department of Assam is not sensitive enough to provide a separate line for the third genders in the polling booths, which compels them to stand either in the line of the male, female, physically disabled person or the senior citizens.
“The officials are very trans-phobic in nature, who do not want to take any further initiative for the transgender community in comparison to other Election departments of the other states,” Baruah said.
Courtesy : Guwahati Plus
Note: This news piece was originally published in guwahatiplus.com and used purely for non-profit/non-commercial purposes exclusively for Human Rights objectives.