India's 2026 amendments to the Transgender Persons (Protection of Rights) Act stripped away the right to self-perceived gender identity and narrowed the legal definition of a transgender person to physiological characteristics. The Supreme Court is now hearing a dozen challenges to the law, and cracks are already showing in the government coalition that passed it.

What the amendments actually did

You have to understand what was there before. India's Supreme Court, in its 2014 NALSA judgment, recognised the right of transgender people to self-identify their gender. That was a landmark moment, not just for India but for the region. It said, plainly, that a person knows who they are, and the state should follow their lead.

The 2026 amendments reversed that. They removed the right to self-perceived gender identity from the statute and replaced it with a definition tied to physiological characteristics. In practice, that means the state now decides who is transgender, not the person living that reality. Opposition MPs called it an attack on constitutional morality and on the dignity of transgender persons. They were right.

The justification offered by the government and its allies was that retaining self-determination would allow people to "falsely" claim a transgender identity in order to access social welfare benefits. I have heard versions of this argument in many countries, and it tells you more about the anxiety of the people making it than about the lived experience of trans people. The idea that people are inventing a gender identity to claim benefits is not supported by evidence. What is supported by evidence is that trans people face significant economic disadvantage, discrimination, and exclusion, and that welfare provision for them is often wholly inadequate.

A party that voted for it, and a state that won't defend it

Here is where the story gets genuinely interesting. Andhra Pradesh is governed by the Telugu Desam Party, a BJP ally and part of the National Democratic Alliance. A TDP MP, Byreddy Shabari, stood in the Lok Sabha on 24 March and supported the Bill, raising the very claims about people falsely adopting a transgender identity for begging at traffic signals. The Bill passed. The government notified it.

Then, in August, the Andhra Pradesh government filed an affidavit in the Supreme Court saying that the constitutional validity of the law is "primarily a matter for the Union of India," and that the state has "not taken any independent action that is discriminatory towards transgender persons." It declined to defend the amendments it had helped pass.

You can read that in different ways. Perhaps it is a straightforward jurisdictional argument: the state didn't write the law, so the state shouldn't have to defend it. Perhaps it is something more political, a quiet distancing from a law that is proving harder to justify under scrutiny. Either way, it is not the picture of unified conviction that the government presented when the Bill was moving through Parliament.

The Andhra Pradesh affidavit also included data on transgender identity certification across the state: of 3,750 applications, 3,233 certificates had been issued, 403 had been "filtered," and 114 were pending. That word, filtered, deserves attention. Four hundred and three people applied for recognition of who they are, and were filtered out. The affidavit offers no explanation of what that means for those individuals.

Uttarakhand takes the opposite view

Uttarakhand, also BJP-ruled, took a different path. Its submission to the Supreme Court defended the amendments, arguing that the law is "ameliorative and beneficial in nature" and that its operation in the state has not resulted in any denial of trans people's rights. The process of identification, certification, welfare, and rehabilitation, it said, has continued.

I find this harder to accept at face value. A law that removes the right to define your own gender identity is not ameliorative; it is restrictive. Describing it as beneficial to trans people while trans people across the country are protesting it, while members of the government's own National Council for Transgender Persons resigned in response to it, and while a dozen legal challenges are before the Supreme Court, is a significant stretch.

What Uttarakhand's position does reflect is the logic that governments often reach for when they want to limit rights while maintaining the appearance of care: we are doing this for you, not to you. Trans people and their advocates are generally well placed to judge which is which.

The pattern is not uniquely Indian

I am not singling India out. The pattern of using law to redefine who counts as transgender, to move the authority over gender identity from the individual to the state, is happening across very different political systems right now. It happened in the United Kingdom through the Supreme Court's interpretation of the Equality Act. It has happened in various US states. It is happening in parts of Europe. The specific legal architecture differs. The underlying move is the same: taking a right that people had, or were beginning to have, and legislating it away.

What makes the Indian case particularly pointed is that the NALSA judgment was a genuine milestone. It was not a perfect solution, and trans rights in India remain severely constrained in practice, but it was a clear statement from the country's highest court that self-determination of gender identity matters. The 2026 amendments walked directly into that legacy and dismantled part of it.

The Supreme Court is now the arena. At least a dozen petitions are before it. The Union government has not yet responded to the challenges. One of its key allies has refused to defend the law. That is not a position of strength.

Trans people in India have been here before, fighting for recognition in the courts while the political class argues over their existence. The NALSA judgment showed that the courts can get it right. I hope they do so again.

If there is a news story you would like me to cover then just let Sammy know.

Dr Helen Webberley is a Gender Specialist, Medical Educator, and advocate for trans rights and gender diversity.