Allahabad High Court: Every Individual Has Right To Undergo Sex Change

The Allahabad High Court ordered the UP DGP to dispose application made by a female police constable seeking authorization to have sex reassignment surgery (SRS), noting that a person has a fundamental right to change their sex through surgical intervention.

Justice Ajit Kumar stated that such a person who has gender dysphoria and, aside from physical structure, her feelings and traits are of the opposite sex to the extent that there is a complete misalignment of her personality with her physical body does have a constitutionally recognized right to have her sex changed through surgical intervention.

In response to a writ petition filed by an unmarried UP policewoman officer who claimed to have gender dysphoria and wanted to undergo SRS to be eventually identified and customized as a male with a male bodily character, the court made the following observations.

The petitioner’s attorney spoke on her behalf, stating that the petitioner requested the requisite sanction for SRS on March 11, 2023 before UP DGP in Lucknow, but that no decision had been made as of that point, leading to the filing of the current petition.

The petitioner’s attorney argued that the respondent’s decision to withhold the petitioner’s application was unjustified by citing notably the Supreme Court case National Legal Services Authority vs. Union of India and Others (2014).

In this decision, the Supreme Court defined transgender persons to be the “third gender” while granting them the freedom to self-identify as either male, female, or third gender. The state government has been requested by the court to inform as to whether it has established rules in accordance with the Supreme Court’s 2014 ruling requiring hospitals to treat transgender patients and to provide them with private restrooms.

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