Madras HC orders gender reclassification in nursing council records
Madras High Court orders Tamil Nadu nursing council to change a registrant's gender from transgender to male in all records and communications.
The Madras High Court has directed the Tamil Nadu Nurses and Midwives Council (TNNMC) to update its records to reflect a registrant's gender as male, removing any prior transgender identification. The order applies to both digital and physical records, and the council must ensure that no reference to the earlier gender classification is included in any communication or document transferred to other authorities.
Justice D. Bharatha Chakravarthy issued the directive after considering the petitioner's request to migrate to Karnataka. The court instructed that the TNNMC must strike out terms such as 'transgender' or 'transgender male' from all records and replace them with 'male'. The judge further ordered that the correction should not be conveyed to any other authority, including the Karnataka State Nursing Council (KSNC), to avoid any stigma attached to the petitioner's previous gender identification.
"In all communications, henceforth, the writ petitioner should be described only as a male," the judge stated, adding that even in records transferred to Karnataka, the petitioner should be described purely as male without any note about the earlier classification.
The court also directed the TNNMC to complete the corrections and transfer the petitioner's records to Karnataka within eight weeks. The orders came after the petitioner's counsel, Chandini Pradeep Kumar, assisted by K.R. Mhanasha Devi, argued that the client had originally registered with the Tamil Nadu Transgender Welfare Board and held a transgender identity card under Section 6 of the Transgender Persons (Protection of Rights) Act, 2019.
The petitioner underwent gender affirmation surgery in 2024, changed his name in the official gazette, and obtained a gender identification certificate from a district magistrate under Section 7 of the Act. However, due to a hostile environment and circumstances related to his gender and behaviour, he decided to move to a new environment in Karnataka. While seeking registration transfer from TNNMC to KSNC, the petitioner requested that no reference to his previous gender be made in any record, leading to the present writ petition.