Madras High Court Orders Nurses Council to Record Petitioner as Male, Without Any Trace of Transgender Description

The petitioner, a nurse registered with the Council, was earlier registered as a transgender person and held an identity certificate under Section 6 of the Act (para 2). After gender-affirmation surgery and a gazetted change of name, his Aadhaar, PAN and voter ID showed him as male, and on 13.03.2026 the District Magistrate issued a Form 4 certificate under Section 7 (paras 2-3). Facing a hostile work environment, he sought to move his registration to Karnataka, but the Council's verification communication still described him as a transgender man (para 3). The State said the e-mail used the description available on record (para 4).

The Court set out Section 7, under which a person holding a Section 6 certificate who undergoes surgery may obtain a revised certificate from the District Magistrate and is entitled to change the name in the birth certificate and all official identity documents (para 6). A person covered by the Act thus has a right to alter gender identity, with the District Magistrate as the final certifying authority (para 7). Once the petitioner had undergone surgery, his records had changed and the Magistrate had issued the Form 4 certificate, every authority was bound to carry out the change (para 7). Relying on Justice K.S. Puttaswamy (Aadhaar), the Court held that the right to construct one's own identity falls within the fundamental right to privacy, and every authority must give effect to that right and to Section 7 (para 8). It therefore directed the Council to correct its records, digitally or by scoring out, without conveying the correction to any other authority, and to describe the petitioner purely as male in all communications and in the records sent to Karnataka (para 8).