The Rajasthan government has now told a Bench of the Rajasthan High Court that the extent and structure of reservation policy are matters of executive and legislative competence and that the Court cannot create a new class of reservation in a plea seeking horizontal quotas for transgender people in public education and employment in the State.
A Jodhpur Bench of the Rajasthan High Court is currently hearing a plea by Ganga Kumari, challenging a 2023 circular of the State government that placed transgender people within the Other Backward Classes list of the State in a bid to provide quotas to them. Ms. Kumari has argued that this classification fails to account for the “unique status” of transgender people as socially and educationally backward citizens and is counter-productive.
Responding to the petition on behalf of the Social Justice Department’s Secretary, Additional Advocate General Praveen Khandelwal, has argued that the petitioners had “failed to demonstrate by any cogent material or statistical data that providing a separate horizontal reservation for transgender persons would lead to actual benefit in terms of proportionate representation under the existing roster system”.
The 2023 circular, which has now been challenged, was issued after Ms. Kumari had approached the High Court for transgender reservation, citing the Supreme Court of India’s 2014 NALSA judgement. A Double Bench of the High Court had in 2022 directed that reservation be provided to transgender persons without specifying what the nature of this reservation would be.
