'T' for transgender in India railway tickets soon

Transgenders will now have the option of identifying themselves as the third gender with the India’s railway authority modifying reservation forms to provide the option ‘T’, besides ‘M’ (male) and ‘F’ (female), The Hindu reported.

The railway board in a letter to all zonal railways has said that ticket booking and cancellation forms will be modified from the current option of ‘Transgender (Male/Female)’ to just ‘T’.

According to the letter, the Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment is at present dealing with various issues of transgenders and a proposed legislation on this — The Transgender Persons (Protection of Rights) Bill, 2016, is being reviewed by a parliamentary standing committee.



“The matter has been reviewed and it has been decided that till such time the detailed modalities on this account are finalised by the ministry, a provision may be made in the system to capture the gender of transgender as ‘T’ instead of ‘T(M/F)’ as advised earlier,” according to the October 17 letter.

In a landmark judgment in 2014, the supreme court created the ‘third gender’ status for hijras or transgenders.

Earlier, they had to write male or female in gender column.



Following the order, many government documents such as passport, ration card, bank forms and voter identity cards have started providing ‘TG’ (third gender), ‘Other’ or ‘T’ (transgender) as options.

The railways introduced the option as ‘T(M/F)’ through an order in 2016 which, activists said, still forced them to choose between the binary genders — male or female.

The railway board said in its review it had also taken into consideration directions of the Kolkata High Court which had asked State Bank of India to allow the choice of third gender in its application forms for recruiting new employees.