The Madras High Court on Wednesday disposed of a public interest litigation petition seeking reservation for transpersons in education and public employment, after the State government informed it of having already provided the best possible options for reservation to transgender candidates.
Chief Justice Munishwar Nath Bhandari and Justice N. Mala held that no orders needed to be passed on the PIL petition filed by P. Sudha of Indian Transgender Initiative, since Advocate General R. Shunmugasundaram had produced before the court a series of Government Orders (GOs) on the issue.
It was brought to the notice of the court that in the famous National Legal Services Authority case, the Supreme Court had, on April 15, 2014, directed the Centre and the State governments to take steps to treat the third gender as a socially and educationally backward class and provide reservation to members of that community.
Accordingly, a GO was issued on April 6, 2015 to consider transgender candidates under the Most Backward Class (MBC) category in education and public employment and, accordingly, the Collectors were directed to instruct the certificate-issuing authorities to issue MBC certificates to transpersons.
Thereafter, another GO was issued on December 22, 2017, making it clear that transgender candidates possessing Scheduled Caste or Scheduled Tribe certificates could be considered under those categories, and those who do not possess any community certificate could be provided reservation under the MBC category.
It was further clarified that if the transgender candidates belonged to any other category apart from SC/ST/MBC, they could be given the option of applying under that particular category or under the MBC category, after ascertaining which of the two would be more advantageous to them in education and public employment.
The December 2017 GO, issued by the Social Welfare Department, also stated that if a transgender candidate specifically identified herself as a ‘female’ through a self-declaration before the Tamil Nadu Third Gender Welfare Board, she would be entitled to 30% reservation meant for women candidates.
“Therefore, the best possible options for reservation had already been provided to the transgender candidates in the State,” the A-G told the court. Concurring with him, the Division Bench observed that no direction needed to be given to the State government on the issue, in view of the government orders that had already been passed.
