Sreya Kanugula
The Delhi High Court sought response of the Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) along with the Central government, on the request made in an application asking for a change of name, gender, and the photograph in his Xth and XIIth grade certificates, filed by a transgender man.
They gave the date of the next hearing upon this matter for the 12th of February 2021.
The division bench comprising Justices DN Patel and Jyoti Singh oversaw the application with the filed plea that challenged the validity of the issued CBSE by-laws that fail for any mechanism for a procedure on changing the name and gender in the school certificates for transgender people.
The filed application contended that the issued by-law is “arbitrary, irrational, discriminatory and violative of the privacy, dignity and autonomy of the Petitioner guaranteed under Articles 14, 15, 19(1)(a) and 21 of the Constitution as it requires transgender people to undergo a cumbersome two-step process meant for cis-gender students, first of publication of name change in the Official Gazette and subsequently obtaining a direction from the Court to that effect, which must be done before the publication of the examination result.”
The transgender petitioner who self-identifies as a man had his petition filed by his Advocates, Amritananda Chakravorty, Mihir Samson, and Shreya Munoth in the court, on his behalf.
The filed instant Application sought to implement the directions written under the Transgender Persons (Protection of Rights) Act, 2019 that became effective from the 10th January 2020.
The application also sought for the enforcement of the rules under Transgender Persons Rules, 2020 which were published on the 25th of September in 2020. It asked for a change in the name, gender and photograph of the petitioner in his Xth and XIIth grade certificates.
As per the Rules, transgender people are entitled to change their gender, photograph and their name, as necessitated in any of their official documents (which includes previous educational certificates) in congruence with the gender that they self-identify and record in identification cards.
The instant application mentioned that the petitioner already had the self-identification of his gender being male, on record in his identification documents before the Act came into force and thus, was entitled to the rights and any entitlements given to him under the Act.
The petitioner has also already undergone gender-affirming surgery to match his self-identified gender and because of doing so, had incongruent documents of identification.
The application stated that the identity in his Aadhaar card showed his self-identified name along with his gender, but his school certificates continued to show his “dead name” and previous photograph and gender.
The petitioner went onto state that he had faced and is continuing to face immense financial distress due to the issue of document incongruence and the consequent absence of job opportunities that follow it.
Since the Xth and XIIth grade documents serve vital when applying for employment or educational institutions and they became a necessity as they acted as an assessment of merit as well as proof of age, date of birth and so on, the petitioner requested that his information be changed as stipulated under the Transgender Persons Act and Rules.