MP Assembly polls: Trans community disappointed at exclusion from mainstream political debate

Indore: Transgenders in Madhya Pradesh claim that neither any political party nor any candidate contesting the upcoming state assembly elections is talking about the issues related to the members of the community, especially their health and the right to live life with dignity.

Elections to the 230-member Madhya Pradesh assembly will be held on November 17 with the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and the opposition Congress being the two main contenders.

Members of the transgender community complain that they are being ignored as the issues that matter to them the most are completely missing from electioneering.

Sandhya Ghavri, who belongs to the transgender community, is the cleanliness ambassador of the Indore Municipal Corporation and is also working on a fellowship related to the subject of the Constitution. The social activist, who works for protecting the interests of transgenders, said she had decided long ago that she would not seek alms for livelihood as done by many others from the community.

Talking to PTI on Thursday, Ghavri said, 'The government has recognised the third gender category apart from male and female, but no party or candidate is talking about the issues of our community in the assembly elections, especially about our education, health and the right to live life with dignity.' The Madhya Pradesh government has not done anything for transgenders in the state as compared to what the governments in neighbouring Chhattisgarh and other states have done, she said.

'People from the transgender community are invited to government functions only for show-off,' Ghavri alleged.

She also said that as compared to the actual population of transgenders in MP, very few people from the community possess voter ID cards.

The government data also confirms this. As per the data, there are 2.88 crore male voters and 2.72 crore female voters at present in the state, while the number of transgender voters is only 1,373, including 111 in Indore.

Suchita Tirkey Beck, Joint Director of the state government's Social Justice Department, said members of the transgender community are constantly being motivated to not only get voter ID cards, but also cast their votes.

'It has often been seen that transgenders living separately from their families do not even have identity documents like Aadhaar cards. This also creates problems in making their voter ID cards. However, we help them in every possible way in getting these documents made,' she said.