With voter mapping currently under way in Karnataka ahead of the Special Intensive Revision (SIR), transgender persons said the exercise risks excluding them, as it does not account for the identity and documentation changes they have undergone over the years. 

For many transgender and intersex persons, the details recorded in older official documents no longer match the identity they use at present.

Identity mismatch

Before the Supreme Court’s 2014 NALSA judgment that formally recognised transgender persons as a third gender, members of the transgender community were recorded in official documents only under the name and gender given to them at birth, either as a male or female.

Following the judgment, many updated voter IDs and other identity records to reflect their affirmed identities. While this marked a significant step towards legal recognition, it has also created a documentation gap, with older electoral and educational records continuing to carry previous details, while the new documents reflect updated identities. As a result, school certificates, birth records and voter entries carry one name and gender marker, while newer documents such as Aadhaar cards and transgender identity certificates reflect another.

The community members said this mismatch has now come up as a major concern during the ongoing verification exercise.

They also point out that while the SIR requires documents to establish citizenship, transgender identity certificates issued through the National Portal for Transgender Persons- documents commonly used to officially update gender details across records- are not among the listed documents currently accepted for the exercise.

“All transgender persons have generally migrated and rebuilt their lives elsewhere out of fear, rejection and judgment. Many of us have been abandoned by our families,” said Christy Raj, a trans man.

“I removed my mother’s initials after my family refused to accept my identity and have lived away from them since 2004. Before the NALSA judgment, my records carried a female name and gender, which I later updated. But many in our community, especially those who are poor or uneducated, have not been able to do so. Even among those who have, spelling errors and discrepancies are common.” 

For the SIR, if details across documents do not match during voter mapping, notices are issued seeking clarification. “However, when both sets of documents belong to the same person but carry different names or gender markers, establishing continuity becomes difficult in the absence of a clear mechanism to reconcile such discrepancies,” Raj argued.

Many transgender persons The Hindu spoke to said they were forced to leave their homes or were disowned by their families after revealing their gender identity. In many such cases, they lost access to their documents such as birth certificates, school documents, and proof linked to earlier voter registrations, neither do they remember where their families were enrolled in 2002.

Progeny mapping

This adds another layer of challenge in cases specifically involving progeny mapping. If a voter’s name is not in the list in the 2002 electoral rolls, progeny mapping (for young voters) is done to connect via parents or grandparents to prove legitimacy.

For many transgender persons, this is a near-impossible requirement, they said. “Having been disowned or forced to leave home because of gender identity, we no longer know where our families were registered as voters or have had no contact with them for years,” Harshitha, a trans woman said, adding that expecting them reconnect with estranged families to access them is both unrealistic and unsafe. 

Differences in physical appearance between older records and present identity documents is also another challenge, with many saying they are uncertain about how such changes will be treated during verification.