With growing awareness and sensitisation, The Indian Railways, too, plans to introduce reforms to recognise 'transgenders' in their forms. This will reflect in ticket booking and cancellation forms, which will be modified to include a 'T' beside 'M' and 'F'.
So far, only male and female categories were mentioned in the forms.
According to a recent Railway Board letter to all zonal railways, the Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment is at present dealing with various issues of transgenders and a proposed legislation — 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 of Social Justice, a provision may be made in the system to capture the gender of transgenders as 'T' instead of 'T(M/F)' as advised earlier," says the letter.
In a landmark judgement in 2014, the Supreme Court created the 'third gender' status for hijras or transgenders.
Following the order, many government documents such as passports, ration cards, bank forms, and voter identity cards have started providing 'TG' (third gender), 'Other' or 'T' (transgender) as options. However, despite introducing the option 'T(M/F)' through an order in 2016, the railway forms kept giving binary option of M/F only.
The Railway Board said in its review it had also taken into consideration the directions of the Kolkata High Court which had asked State Bank of India to include the third gender category in its application forms for recruitments.
The Centre for Railway Information Systems (CRIS), an autonomous organisation under the Ministry of Railways, will make necessary changes in the software to include the transgender category in the passenger railway system under intimation to all zonal railways, the letter said.
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