Being a citizen of India, while we are entitled to certain rights and privileges, the LGBTQ community has often found itself fighting for those rights. On one hand where most of us actively participate in pride parades to stand in solidarity with the people who have been discriminated for their sexual preferences and gender, the authorities were never in favour of them. However, now the situation is changing and we are glad that our judicial system is looking up at issues that were largely left untouched or ignored before. Setting a ground-breaking example for the whole country, Madras High Court recently allowed a transgender software engineer to change his *** as ‘male' in school and college records.

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S Rekha Kaliamoorthy was born as a woman, but she always identified herself and lived as a guy. So after consultation with a surgeon, she underwent a hormone therapy followed by a *** reassignment surgery to become a man. Reportedly, after the hormone replacement therapy and psychology test was done, she was certified as a transgender. Rekha now wants to change her *** from female to male and her name as K Gowtham Subramaniam in her education records.

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However, this victory wasn't an easy one at all. Initially, Gowtham's request to change his name and *** weren't taken into consideration and the reason was – absence of any precedent or provision. So Gowtham chose to move to the court, and addressing his plea, Justic Pushpa Sathyanarayana passed an order in favour of him. The judge said, “He has also produced sufficient documents to prove his identity and the authorities ought to have considered his application on merit. In fact, the authorities, in the nature of the present case, should readily extend their helping hand rather than denying the same looking down upon them.” The judge further added that just because Gowtham belongs to the third gender, he can't be made to go through so many hassles because there weren't any rules in place; especially when he provided all the required medical certificates.   

However, this is not the first time that Madras HC has played a messiah for the transgenders. In April, the court directed the Tamil Nadu government to build public toilets and bathrooms for transgenders. Then in another astounding incident, Madras HC helped Tamil Nadu get its first transgender police sub-inspector. We highly appreciate and applaud the progressive move of Madras HC and hope that other states and cities would take inspiration from these verdicts.

Source: Hindustan Times