Voting rights are often defined as equal and neutral. In practice, however, they can remind a large number of transgender, intersex and queer people living in India that they have had to rebuild their entire lives after social and/or physical disruptions.
After being conducted in 13 states and union territories Bihar and Bengal, the Election Commission’s Special Intensive Revision (SIR) is currently taking place in Karnataka. And trans and/or queer people there now face the same problems. Although on paper the exercise cleans the electoral rolls, a letter submitted by My Vote, My Right (MVMR) to the Chief Electoral Officer of Karnataka shows how exclusionary such a process can be, as reported by The News Minute.
To substantiate their point, MVMR interviewed 74 transgender and intersex people from different districts in Karnataka. The results showed that respondents could not determine where their parents or grandparents were registered or where they voted in 2002. According to a report by Citizen AffairsUsing a family member’s past voting records to determine eligibility to vote is called “descendancy mapping.” But the family is not a safe or accessible institution for many trans and/or queer people.
While documentation comes naturally to heterosexual cisgender citizens whose lives have often been validated by family and the state—from birth certificates and school records to proof of address and voter IDs—many trans people do not inherit documents in this way. They have to leave households; some are denied or declared dead. The few documents they once had may also become unusable because they bear a name and gender that no longer represents them.
The “My Voice, My Rights” coalition highlights fears of exclusion ahead of the SIR exercise in Karnataka; Image via The News Minute
Worse still, Karnataka Chief Minister DK Shivakumar said that those who are unable to update their SIR details this time may also lose government benefits in general. Transsexuals are therefore disproportionately affected by this decision.
When documentation becomes an obstacle to voting
Can SIR then simply be defined as an elective exercise? If a person’s current Aadhaar card shows a freely chosen name but an older school certificate lists a dead name, what exactly does the state require them to prove? If a trans woman has a voter ID card in one identity, an Aadhaar card in another, and a transgender certificate that reflects her current self, why do bureaucratic differences become a cause for distrust?
This disproportion affects their right to vote and sometimes even deprives them of it altogether. Many respondents had income certificates, voter ID cards or ration cards, but did not have the specific historical documents required by the SIR such as birth certificates, caste certificates or matriculation records. Even if they have older documents, gender-affirming transitions can result in those records no longer reflecting their current appearance or identity.
The SIR process can therefore, whether intended or not, cause a form of psychological stress. Asking queer and transgender people who have been evicted from their families to provide records associated with the same households can put them back in dangerous or coercive situations. It may also happen that relatives with whom they no longer have contact or with whom they do not feel safe unintentionally reveal their gender identity or sexual orientation.
Similarly, in West Bengal, the SIR upgradation exercise was conducted between November 4, 2025 and February 21, 2026, as reported by BehanBoxexcluded hundreds of people who could not return to the hostile environments from which they had fled – risking their safety just to retain their right to vote in their own country.
Legal recognition vs. the reality of inclusion
Legally, over the last decade, India has expanded protections for transgender and queer citizens through landmark developments such as the Supreme Court’s 2014 judgment in National Legal Services Authority v. Union of India (NALSA), the 2018 Navtej Singh Johar v. Union of India judgment, and the 2019 Transgender Persons (Protection of Rights) Act.
But how meaningful are these rights when electoral systems continue to treat gender-diverse citizens as effectively ineligible to vote unless they can produce records produced under the very conditions of exclusion and discrimination they have fought against?
As stated by the Directorate General of Information and Public Relations of Maharashtra in a Facebook post As of June 29, a person only needs to meet four criteria: be an Indian citizen, be at least 18 years old, be a resident of the constituency in which he or she wishes to vote and not be disqualified under any law. But given multiple indirect disqualifications and the inaccessibility of historical voting records or family connections, how easy is compliance in reality?
The risk is not limited to transgender people. Many LGBTQ+ people, especially those from lower-income and marginalized castes, face rejection from their families because of their sexual orientation or gender identity. Some heterosexual people also experience family exclusion after marrying outside their caste or religion. Ultimately, anyone whose life has been disrupted by social punishment can be disadvantaged by a system like SIR, which relies heavily on uninterrupted family ties.
To remedy the situation, the government must build processes that are grounded in the realities of vulnerable communities, rather than the assumptions of those whose identities and histories have always been documented and accepted.
Sohini (she/her) hails from Kolkata and loves to research and write about everything related to society, culture and gender. With a background in journalism and English literature, they have finally managed to make heartfelt conversations a big part of their lives outside of the usual boxes.
