In 2009, Madhuri Sarode, dressed in a sari, went to cast her vote for the Lok Sabha polls. Her election card had her original male name and photo. The perplexed guards made her wait for four hours trying to find a solution to her “problem”.
A senior election officer came when the polling was about to close and gave her the green signal to vote on condition that it would be counted as a “male” vote. “I decided not to vote. It was hard enough trying to repeatedly explain about how the change from masculine to feminine had come along,” said the Kurla resident.
On Thursday, many like Ms Sarode will for the first time, cast their vote in Mumbai after the Supreme Court last week recognised transgender people as the third gender.
In February, the transgender community of El Salvador voted for the first time at the Salvadorian Presidential elections. This year, Indian Parliamentary election is seeing a similar stir among sexual minorities. Here, the transgender community was first recognised by the Election Commission (EC) under the 'Other' category in 2010. But the recent ruling by the Supreme Court extending legal recognition to the “third gender” has given a fillip to the movement.
Urmi Jadhav who stopped voting ten years ago will exercise her right to vote this time. “I was tired of voting as a man when I didn’t feel like one. Now that our community has got recognition for its own existence, I will vote,” says Ms Jadhav.
In Mumbai, members from the community began their rounds at the Mantralaya from September last year asking bureaucrats to start their registration procedure. "Despite several months of follow up, most of the hijras do not have election cards as they don't have a proof of residence. They live either in slums or with the community gurus, so they have no documents. There will be just about 200 registered voters this time," said Satyamma who heads the Darpan Foundation which works with the transgender community. The organisation has managed to get 73 people registered in the "other" category over the last three months.
But where are the votes likely to go in a scenario where the Congress and the Aam Aadmi Party are the only parties which mentioned striking of Section 377 --- which criminalizes sexual activities "against the order of nature" --- in their manifestos? Activist Girish Vaidya who has been working with the community for more than two decades said that the voting pattern is a collective decision. “The transgender Panchayat in Vikhroli takes decisions. The community has always had a penchant to the Congress and will definitely not vote the BJP. They are not yet sure about AAP as there is no clear structure to the party,” he said.
And what do they seek from the electoral process? “The system has never treated us as equals wanting to lead a dignified life. We just want to be able to live as normal human beings who can interact freely with others,” said Ms Sarode.