NALSA v. Union of India
(2014) 5 SCC 438 · 2-judge bench
The National Legal Services Authority sought legal recognition of a third gender and protection of transgender persons' fundamental rights, at a time when transgender identity had no formal legal status.
The Court recognised a right to self-identify one's gender — as male, female, or third gender — without requiring surgery or medical proof, grounding this in the dignity and personal autonomy protected under Article 21, and directed the government to treat transgender persons as a backward class for reservation purposes.
The direct legal foundation for the Transgender Persons (Protection of Rights) Act, 2019 — before this, transgender persons had no clear legal identity recognition at all in India.
Related law
The dignity/autonomy right self-identification was grounded in
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Navtej Singh Johar v. Union of India
Ended over 150 years of criminalisation of consensual same-sex relationships in India — though, as Supriyo v. Union of India (2023) later clarified, this decriminalisation didn't extend to marriage recognition, which the Court left to Parliament.
Justice K.S. Puttaswamy v. Union of India
This is the constitutional foundation later relied on in the decriminalisation of homosexuality (Navtej Johar) and the transgender self-identification ruling (NALSA had already touched on dignity, but Puttaswamy made privacy itself explicit) — one ruling that reshaped multiple areas of personal-autonomy law.
This is a plain-English summary, not verbatim judgment text. Adhikar is an independent citizen-awareness platform, not a Government of India website. Always verify against the full judgment (indiankanoon.org, sci.gov.in) or a qualified advocate before relying on this for an actual legal situation.