Committee to be formed for welfare of transgenders

NEW DELHI: To make the lives of transgenders in the Capital easy and bring them into the mainstream, the Delhi government will form a committee to highlight and solve various issues faced by the community related to health, education and legal aid.

A meeting in this regard was attended by Secretary, Social Welfare (SW), Director Social Welfare Laya Vasudevan, legal and technical expert, representatives of the transgender community and the United Nations Development Programme.

The decision was taken on Friday in a meeting chaired by Delhi Social Welfare Minister Rajendra Pal Gautam.

A committee of seven experts who understand the issues of transgenders in-depth and can address them on the policy formulation at a larger scale will work to include the community in the mainstream society.

The committee will also look for possible ways to map the population of the transgenders in the city.

"Our Constitution is gender-neutral and considers all the people its citizen. They too are like all other humans, but it is the society which thinks they are different," Gautam said during the meeting.

Gautam said that he is committed to bringing a qualitative change in the lives of this community so that they are empowered to join the mainstream society and lead a fully constructive and dignified life.

He further said that it is not their fault that they belong to the transgender community. Rather, it is the society that views them through a prism. They too are like all other human beings and the Indian Constitution is gender neutral as it considers every Indian as its citizen.