Rajasthan HC expunges its own remarks that Trans Amendment Act dilutes ‘constitutional guarantees’
The Hindu
Rajasthan High Court expunges remarks on Trans Amendment Act, clarifying unintended criticisms and affirming transgender rights in new ruling.
The Rajasthan High Court has modified its March 30 verdict to expunge certain portions criticising the recently enacted Transgender Persons (Protection of Rights) Amendment Act, 2026. In a clarificatory order issued on April 2, the court said that its observations that the amendment diluted constitutional guarantees had been included “by mistake” and were “neither intended nor necessary.”
The March 30 ruling on a petition filed by a transgender woman included an epilogue authored by Justice Arun Monga, which observed that the new law, by curtailing the right to gender self-identification, departs from the “constitutional baseline” set by the Supreme Court’s 2014 ruling in National Legal Services Authority (NALSA) v. Union of India. It further noted that the amendment risked reducing what the top court had recognised as an “inviolable aspect of personhood” to a “contingent, State-mediated entitlement”.
The amendment Bill was passed in Parliament last week and became law with the President’s assent late on Monday (March 30).
In its April 2 order, the Rajasthan HC Bench observed that certain portions had been inadvertently included in the epilogue of the earlier judgment. It accordingly directed the deletion of paragraphs which stated that the rights of transgender persons must not be “rendered illusory by procedural constraints” and which criticised the amendment for making legal recognition of gender identity contingent upon “certification, scrutiny, or other forms of administrative endorsement”.
“Upon our re-reading of the epilogue, it appears that by mistake the following text was included therein, although it was neither intended nor necessary,” said the Bench, which also included Justice Yogendra Kumar Purohit.
Editorial | A shade of dark: On the Transgender Persons (Protection of Rights) Amendment Bill, 2026
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