'Cannot insist to undergo gender reassignment surgery for passport'

New Delhi: The Delhi High Court Monday said passport rules requiring a transgender person to produce a certificate of gender reassignment surgery for issuance of a passport with declared sex is prima facie violative of the fundamental right to life and personal liberty and authorities cannot insist someone undergo such operation.

The high court said the rule was prima facie in the teeth of the Supreme Court's judgement which led to the recognition of transgender people as the 'third gender'.

It granted one week to the counsel for the Centre and asked him to take instructions on the issue and listed the matter for April 22.

You should change your rule . Who are you to say get the certificate of surgery? This is violative of Article 21 (of the Constitution) right? Come back in a week and please advise your client to have flexibility in this rule," a bench of Acting Chief Justice Vipin Sanghi and Justice Navin Chawla said.

The court further said, you cannot insist on somebody to undergo a sex-change operation for that (passport) purpose. You can classify such persons as transgenders and then there can be sub-classification into trans man, trans woman, whatever the orientation of the person is, whatever the person wants to declare himself or herself as but where is the question of insistence on surgery? One person does not want to undergo surgery but identifies himself or herself as a male or female.

Referring to the apex court's NALSA judgement, the bench said as per that verdict, transgenders have a right to decide their self-identified gender, and that right was upheld.

It means that a transgender person will himself or herself decide the gender and you will abide by that. This insistence is violative of Article 21 right, the bench said.

It said that the passport rules, in so far as it requires a transgender person to produce a certificate of gender reassignment surgery are in the teeth of the apex court's judgement.