Senate Chairman Sadiq Sanjrani said on Monday that the committee formed to consider the recently proposed amendments to the Transgender (Protection of Rights) Act will consult religious scholars and the Council of Islamic Ideology as necessary.
Sanjrani said that the Senate will never do anything against Islamic laws.
Senator Mushtaq Ahmed has submitted amendments to the Act which are currently being weighed in the Senate Committee.
Strongly advising against politicizing the issue unnecessarily, he emphasized that in case of any dispute, the government is committed to follow the consultation route.
Regarding the return of PML-N leader Ishaq Dar, Senator Sanjrani said that he has not been contacted yet. He said that Dar can come and take oath, we have no objection.
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The Transgender Persons (Protection of Rights) Act was passed by the Parliament of Pakistan in 2018. The law prohibits discrimination against transgender people in schools, workplaces and public places, and ensures their right to vote, inherit property and run for public office.
That year, politicians from religious political parties, including Jamaat-e-Islami and Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam Pakistan (Fazl), started a row, insisting that the law was against Islamic principles and should be amended immediately. .
Social media users and conservative politicians accuse the law of allowing gender reassignment surgeries, same-sex marriage and cross-dressing. They also claim that since 2018, when the law was passed, more than 23,000 people have changed their gender.
Claims that the law would allow men to change their gender to female and women to change to male are false on official documents.
The law clearly defines a “transgender person” as someone who is “intersex” with a mixture of male and female genital characteristics or a transgender person who was assigned male gender at birth but undergoes castration. or a trans person whose gender identity differs from the gender assigned at birth.
The rules of the Act further specify that a transgender person will have to approach the National Database and Registration Authority (NADRA) for change of name or gender on identity documents, such as their self-identified identity. And NADRA will only change their gender from female to category “X” or male to category “X”.
“X” is the third gender symbol in Pakistan, a classification created specifically for the trans community in 2009 on a Supreme Court order.
The law or rules do not allow men to change their gender to female or vice versa on their CNICs, passports or other travel documents.
