NHRC notice to govt for dragging feet on welfare of trans people
new delhi: The National Human Rights Commission has now issued a notice to the Delhi government's Department of Social Welfare for allegedly dragging its feet on formulating a policy for transgender persons, forming a Transgender Welfare Board, and creating separate toilets for transgender people in all government buildings.
The federal human rights body has sought an action taken report in this regard from the Secretary of the Department of Social Welfare within the next six weeks.
The NHRC action came on a complaint filed by Dr Aqsa Shaikh, Associate Professor, Community Medicine, Jamia Hamdard University, who alleged that despite agreeing to set up the above-mentioned policies in place in meetings six months ago, the government had taken no action with respect to them.
Dr Shaikh said in her complaint that there were a series of meetings that had taken place under the chairpersonship of the Director (Social Welfare), Department of Social Welfare, to discuss the implementation of welfare policies for transgender people under the Transgender Persons (Protection of Rights) Act of 2019.
She added that in the last of these meetings, held in February this year, the Delhi government had agreed to prepare the draft rules of the legislation and publish them publicly to invite comments and suggestions. In addition, Dr Shaikh said the government had agreed to issue an order to form the Transgender Welfare Board, prepare a policy for transgender persons, and create separate toilets for trans people in government buildings.
The NHRC said that the complainant had sought its intervention after alleging that the government had taken no action on the above-mentioned agreed-to clauses even after six months.
The NHRC had a day ago also issued notice to the DMRC with respect to the offensive signs assigned to transgender toilets across all its metro stations in the Capital.
In the complaint received by the rights body, trans people had found it offensive that toilets for them were marked with a symbol of "half-man and half-woman". They had added that the term Ubhayalingi was extremely offensive.
