The Rajasthan High Court on Monday (March 30, 2026) ruled that the State government’s classification of transgender people within the OBC category for reservations was a “mere facade and an eyewash” that “confers no real reservation whatsoever”, noting that trans people belonging to SC, ST, or other socio-economic categories get no benefit from this.
The court also criticised the Transgender Persons (Protection of Rights) Amendment Bill, 2026 (passed in Parliament, awaiting Presidential assent), which takes away the right to gender self-identification. It said this amendment risked reducing what the Supreme Court had recognised as an “inviolable aspect of personhood” to a “contingent, State-mediated entitlement”.
In the March 30 judgment, a Division Bench of Justices Arun Monga and Yogendra Kumar Purohit noted that horizontal reservations for transgender people (i.e. quota for trans people within each socio-economic category) might also come with issues, and directed the State to form a committee to look into the “compounded, aggravated marginalisation” of trans people from all socio-economic categories.
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