Right to toilet is a basic human right. On 28th July, 2010, the United Nation General Assembly explicitly recognized the human right to water and sanitization and acknowledged that sanitization and clean drinking water are crucial to the realization of all human rights. The right was again confirmed in a revised UN resolution in 2015 called Declaration of “The Human Rights to Safe Drinking Water and Sanitation” as the right to sanitization was overlooked even after the 2010 resolution. Though, the government implemented various policies to ensure that every individual has the access to a toilet but the transgender community was still devoid of this basic right as the separate toilets were not available for them especially in public places and they had to use either the male’s toilet or female’s toilet.
In 2014, the Supreme Court in National Legal Services Authority versus Union of India and Ors. recognized the Transgenders/Hijras/Eunuchs as “Third Gender” and stated that “Hijras/transgender persons face huge discrimination in access to public spaces like restaurants, cinemas, shops, malls etc. Further, access to public toilets is also a serious problem they face quite often. Since, there are no separate toilet facilities for Hijras/transgender persons, they have to use male toilets where they are prone to sexual assault and harassment. Discrimination on the ground of sexual orientation or gender identity, therefore, impairs equality before law and equal protection of law and violates Article 14 of the Constitution of India.” The Court also issued the direction that “Centre and State Governments should take proper measures to provide medical care to TGs in the hospitals and also provide them separate public toilets and other facilities”.
In February 2021, the Delhi Govt. also issued the Order that “In compliance with the provisions of Section 22 of the Transgender Persons (Protection of Rights) Act, 2019, for ensuring adequate welfare measures for transgender persons, all public buildings under all the departments, autonomous bodies, PSUs, corporations, and local bodies of Government of NCT Delhi are hereby directed to create separate identified public toilet facilities for transgender persons.”
Recently, the DMRC (Delhi Metro Rail Corporation) developed 347 new toilets for Transgender persons but the initiative drew the attention of NHRC because of a Complaint. NHRC (National Human Rights Commission) issued the notice to DMRC and called for an ATR (Action Taken Report) from the corporation after taking the cognizance of the complaint in which the complainant alleged that the name “Ubhaylingi” with a symbolic photo of “half male and half female” on the gates of the toilets or outside the toilets is not acceptable term for the Transgender persons and the signage fails to provide a safe space and prevent gender discrimination that the DMRC intended. Complainant requested for the removal of the aforesaid signage and requested that “T” should be used instead of half male and half female symbol and the transliteration of “Transgender Person” in Hindi should be used. The matter is pending adjudication.
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