Times of India: Lucknow: Sunday,
April 13, 2014.
Congress
president Sonia Gandhi, Union finance minister P Chidambaram and Union law and
justice minister Kapil Sibal may have come out against the Supreme Court order,
which upheld Indian Penal Code Section 377 and criminalised gay sex. RTI
documents, however, reveal that the same Congress-led UPA government has done
little to uplift transgenders, for whom there are no welfare schemes, no
reservation, and of course no funds.
In an RTI
reply, ministry of social justice and empowerment has admitted "with
reference to reservation given to transgender community in government services,
it is informed that no separate reservation is given to transgender persons.
They are, however, entitled to reservation as per policy of the government of
India available to SC/ST/OBC category, if they belong to these categories."
On questions
pertaining to head count of transgenders in the country (the question which was
answered by office of registrar general & census commissioner, ministry of
home affairs), the reply furnished to the applicant stated that on the census enumeration
sheet, there are three codes mentioning the sex of the person and family
members. Code 1 and code 2 stand for male and female, respectively, while code
3 mentions people in other categories. The RTI reply further stated that any
person including transgender can voluntarily mention themselves in the other
category. But, there are also possibilities that transgender may mention
themselves as male or female, due to which the exact count of trans-genders is
difficult to be ascertained.
RTI applicant
Sanjay Sharma, who also sought information pertaining to formation of
'Rashtriya Kinnar Aayog' (National Transgender Commission) in the period from
August 15, 1947 to December 31, 2013 was shocked by the answer (dated January
27, 2014) by the Union ministry of social justice and empowerment, which said
"the ministry of social justice and empowerment has recently been mandated
by the Cabinet Secretariat to deal with the subject of transgender. This
ministry has constituted an expert committee dated October 22, 2013 to look
into problems being faced by the transgender community. The committee is
expected to submit its report shortly.
Reacting to
the cold-shoulder response of the Centre, Sanjay Sharma said "if the Union
government seriously wants to help the transgender, they should have adequate
and sound information about the government orders, which it had issued in this
context, how much funds were spent on their welfare and under which heads. The
missing of complete information in this regard categorically points to the fact
that the Centre is least interested in helping the transgender and only wants
to exploit them politically before the Lok Sabha elections."
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