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Thiruvananthapuram MP and Congress leader Shashi Tharoor has been scathing about the Transgender Persons (Protection of Rights) Amendment Bill, 2026, that was introduced in the Lok Sabha on March 13. Tharoor made a very provocative post about X, where he described the bill as a highly regressive proposal that was introduced without due consultation with proper stakeholders.

As Tharoor has indicated, the amendments annul Section 4(2) of the 2019 Act, which assured a right to self-understood gender identity, and replaced this right with a bureaucratization-based system of medical board verification. He also criticized the definition of a transgender person, which has been reduced drastically, based on particular socio-cultural identities (such as hijra, kinter, aravani, and jogta) and some intersex variations, potentially excluding trans men, trans women, genderqueer, and non-binary people.

Other issues are that gender-affirming surgeries are required to be reported to the authorities, and this would pose significant risks to their privacy. Tharoor has presented an argument that the bill is a complete overturn of the rights-based perspective as founded by the groundbreaking 2014 NALSA judgment of the Supreme Court. As he stated, reason and constitutional morality would eventually come out to triumph over what he called a retrogressive course. In the Lok Sabha the bill is to be considered and passed on March 24.