New Delhi: Even though a transgender person’s right to determine their own gender identity is “not a matter of concession” but “of right”, the Modi government’s Trans Amendment Bill risks diluting it to a “contingent, state-mediated entitlement”, the Rajasthan high court said on Monday (March 30).The court made the remarks in the ‘epilogue’ of its judgment on trans woman Ganga Kumari’s plea for the state government to institute horizontal reservation for transgender persons.Noting that the amendment Bill seeks to remove that clause of the Transgender Persons (Protection of Rights) Act, 2019 recognising transgender persons’ right to determine their own gender identity, Justices Yogendra Purohit and Arun Monga wrote on Monday that the “bottom line” is that “selfhood is not a matter of concession, it is a matter of right”.In its 2014 NALSA judgment the Supreme Court had underlined that transgender people do have a right to determine their own gender identity, but the amendment Bill proposes that “legal recognition of gender identity shall be conditioned upon certification, scrutiny or other forms of administrative endorsement”, the high court said.“What was recognised by the Supreme Court as an inviolable aspect of personhood now risks being reduced to a contingent, state-mediated entitlement,” it went on to say.Holding that it is incumbent upon the state government to follow Monday’s order such that it “preserves to the fullest extent possible the principle of self-identification within the contours of the amended law”, the bench added that the authorities “must be mindful that statutory developments cannot be implemented in a manner that dilutes constitutional guarantees”.As a constitutional actor the state government “is expected to adopt an approach that harmonises statutory compliance with constitutional congruity, ensuring that the rights of transgender persons are not rendered illusory by procedural constraints,” the high court said in its epilogue.Its judgment proper ordered the state government to set up a committee comprising senior officials that would conduct a detailed study of the “aggravated marginalisation of transgender persons from all backgrounds”, the findings of which the government is to consider for policymaking purposes.Alongside, pending completion of the above, Rajasthan must grant transgender persons “3% additional weightage in the maximum prescribed marks for purposes of selection and appointment” to government posts and state-run educational institutions.Justices Purohit and Monga also said that while the state government in 2023 had issued a notification placing transgender people in the OBC category for reservation purposes, this move “is a mere facade and an eyewash” as it “seems to be an exercise in form without substance”.“By bringing all transgender persons within … the OBC category, the notification effectively subsumes and extinguishes their pre-existing reservation entitlements, without even affording them an option to choose,” the bench said of the notification.Transgender people born into SC, ST and backward families “suffer compounding and intersecting disadvantages”, said the court.Although parliament passed the amendment Bill earlier this month amid widespread protests, President Droupadi Murmu is yet to grant her assent to the legislation.