Poll office disappoints, transgenders back to square one

“I voted under the ‘male’ category during the Lok Sabha polls. After the SC gave its landmark judgment creating a ‘third gender’ status for us, at least 17 transgenders applied for a change in the gender status,” Khalde said. Of them, 13 had applied under the ‘other’ category and four under the ‘male’ category.

The Supreme Court had recognised the country’s transgender community as the “third gender” — neither male nor female. Since the “hijras” are not legally recognised, members of the transgender community are often ostracised, abused and forced into prostitution, says Bindumadhav Khire, coordinator of Sampathik Trust, an organisation working towards the rights and sexual health issues of gays, men who have sex with men (MSM) and transgenders.

To bring these people into the mainstream, the court had directed to set aside reservation for transgender individuals in jobs and education and also entitled them to other rights like holding a passport, voter card and driving licence.

“We have a population of around 800 MSMs and 200 transgenders for whom we provide various health and advocacy-related services. This year, in a drive to ensure that more transgenders get voting right, we had collected 17 applications for voter IDs of transgenders who have no address and identity proof. Some wanted the voting card as ‘male’ some as ‘O’ (other),” says Khire.

In Khalde’s case, the voter identity card was issued without the change in gender while in the case of one transgender, officials went to her house to inform that she could not get a voter card as the transgender did not have a proof of her name or residence. “A lot of transgenders do not have documents and this prohibits them from applying for any identification document. This is precisely why the Sampathik Trust went through the entire process of meeting EC officials and giving a letter vouching for their identity,” said Khire.

In July this year, the trust wrote to the district collector and requested that the government should allow tritiyapanthis to apply for voter I cards if they furnished a letter issued by the Samapathik Trust. Tehsildar Seema Holkar helped the applicants and told them that after the submission of these forms officials of the Election Commission would order verification of the place of residence of the applicants.

“Why did the EC office accept our application only to reject it later? They could have called all of us during the scrutiny period,” said Khalde.

To Khire too, it came as a shock when despite being identified as ‘male’ he got a letter stating that in relation to his application for a transgender voter card his name was not there in Hadapsar. Khire pointed out that he had never applied for a transgender voter card and that he did not stay in Hadapsar either. “These goof-ups have cost our transgenders their right to vote during this election,” he said.

When contacted, Holkar said she would look into the matter.