Telangana HC asks state to look into transgenders\' plea for Aasara pension

HYDERABAD: The Telangana High Court on Monday directed the state government to consider positively a PIL seeking extending Aasara pensions to transgender persons. A division bench of Chief Justice Ujjal Bhuyan and Justice C.V. Bhaskar Reddy observed that it must be done without any second thoughts as transgender persons were vulnerable and faced social taboo.

The bench said it was of the prima facie opinion that transgenders should be included in the government order that had been issued for providing Aasara pensions to the elderly, women who had lost their husbands, weavers and others.  The court asked for the government’s stand and adjourned the hearing to October 19.

The bench was dealing with a PIL filed during first phase of Covid-19 seeking ration rice and financial assistance to transgender persons without insisting on ID proofs as well as vaccination against the Coronavirus disease. Petitioner’s counsel Jainab explained the pathetic conditions that transgender persons were living in.

Chief Justice Bhuyan said that the government should not ignore transgender persons and they could not be excluded from society. He opined that the government should conduct a census to know the population of transgender persons and a separate board should be established to support them.

When government counsel Radhive Reddy said that Centre had to conduct the census, the bench recalled that the Bihar government had conducted a census of the OBC population. Petitioner’s counsel said that a record produced by the Telangana government, the population of trangender persons in the state was around 59,600 but the government had vaccinated only 12,000 of them against Covid-19.

Chief Justice Bhuyan said that a third gender person, Manabi Bandyopadhyay, had earned a PhD and was a professor; in Tamil Nadu, the AIADMK had appointed a transgender person as official spokesperson and another had become a news anchor. “Social awareness is required to support them,” he said.