The LGBT+ community in India has fought (and continues to fight) a long and hard battle for inclusion. Landmark decisions by the Indian higher judiciary in the last decade are a product of the community’s advocacy efforts. They have ushered in a new age for LGBT+ rights in India by recognising the right to the self-identification of gender and by decriminalising homosexuality.
However, India has a long way to go before its legal framework fully protects the human rights of the LGBT+ community and ensures substantive equality. Laws relating to employment, family, inheritance, marriage and violence continue to exclude LGBT+ lives in different ways, often by failing to account for their unique lived experiences.
Vidhi firmly supports reforms to this legal framework that are a product of wide consultations within the LGBT+ community. Its work aims to supplement the efforts of the community through legal research, strategic legal advice and legislative drafting assistance.
In keeping with this objective, Vidhi has created a manual to help queer persons navigate various aspects of their everyday lives, such as education and identity documents and personal finances. It has also created a set of reports that analyse India’s legal regime across selected areas, from the perspective of LGBT+ inclusion. These are intended as resources for the LGBT+ community to facilitate conversations on legal advocacy strategies.
Vidhi will continue to engage with the LGBT+ community to identify barriers to their inclusion and to co-create solutions for legal reform.
Same-Sex Marriages in India: The Case for Judicial Intervention
In this piece, Kanav N Sahgal responds to Professors G.S. Bajpai and Ankit Kaushik’s arguments against judicial intervention on the issue of same sex marriage. He argues why the court, and not the parliament, is the appropriate forum to decide the issue
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