The Railway Board has asked all zonal railway offices to give transgender travellers the option to identify themselves as the third gender on train tickets.
The reservation forms, which currently have the ‘Transgender (Male/Female)’ option, will be modified to have just the ‘T’ option.
This will be done with all booking and cancellation forms.
On October 17, the Railway Board said in a letter to zonal officers that they could consider this modification to “capture the gender of transgender as ‘T’ instead of ‘T(M/F)’ as advised earlier” till the time a parliamentary standing committee reviewed the Transgender Persons (Protection of Rights) Bill, 2016, reports PTI.
The ‘T(M/F)’ option was introduced on reservation forms in 2016 but received a lot of backlash from activists who said that the option still asked transgender individuals to choose a gender, which defeated the purpose. Doing away with the ‘M/F’ option would make more sense.
In 2014, the Supreme Court announced transgender as the third gender in India and is currently reviewing The Transgender Persons (Protection of Rights), Bill.
The Bill is meant to empower the transgender community, which has been ostracised and discriminated against for ages. It will provide inclusivity to the community and help them empower socially and economically and also provide educational opportunities to them.