Published Nov 10, 2026 | 3:56 PM ⚊ Updated Nov 10, 2026 | 3:56 PM
ALIFA is a pan-Indian network of progressive feminist organisations, women’s rights groups, collectives, activists, academics and individuals.
Synopsis: ALIFA has slammed Women’s Declaration International (WDI) India’s petition in the Supreme Court, accusing the British gender-critical and anti-trans advocacy group of creating a false opposition between cisgender women’s rights and transgender persons’ rights. The petition challenges provisions of the Transgender Persons (Protection of Rights) Act, 2019 that allow legal recognition of a gender different from biological sex, and seeks reconsideration of the Supreme Court’s 2014 NALSA judgment. ALIFA has demanded a critical review of the petition and repeal of the 2026 amendment.
The All-India Feminist Alliance (ALIFA) has strongly criticised a petition filed by Women’s Declaration International (WDI) India in the Supreme Court, accusing it of creating a false opposition between the rights of cisgender women and transgender persons. WDI is a British gender-critical advocacy group, formerly known as the Women’s Human Rights Campaign (WHRC), which campaigns for women’s rights on the basis of biological sex and opposes transgender rights.
ALIFA, a pan-Indian network of progressive feminist organisations, women’s rights groups, collectives, activists, academics and individual women, transgender, non-binary and gender-diverse persons, has demanded a critical review of the petition, which challenges legal recognition of gender identity.
In a statement issued on Tuesday, 10 November, ALIFA said WDI India’s petition sought to restrict legal recognition of gender identity to biological sex, challenge changes to gender markers in official documents and curtail transgender and gender-diverse persons’ access to legal protections and benefits.
It also seeks reconsideration and clarification of the Supreme Court’s 2014 judgment in National Legal Services Authority v. Union of India (NALSA), which recognised transgender persons’ right to legal recognition of their gender identity.
WDI, formerly the Women’s Human Rights Campaign (WHRC), is a British gender-critical and anti-trans advocacy group. It has published a highly controversial Declaration on Women’s Sex-Based Rights and developed model legislation to restrict transgender rights, which has been used in several US state legislatures.
WDI India’s petition challenges Section 7 of the Transgender Persons (Protection of Rights) Act, 2019, as amended in 2026, insofar as it allows persons to obtain certificates recognising a gender different from their biological sex. It also challenges Rule 7 of the 2020 Rules and related regulatory provisions that enable changes to gender details in official documents.
The petitioner contends that these provisions affect statutory protections and benefits specifically guaranteed to biological women. It has also sought reconsideration of the NALSA judgment.
ALIFA rejected WDI’s claim that restricting transgender rights was necessary to protect women’s equality, saying the petition did not represent the position of a large section of India’s feminist and women’s rights movements.
“The claims of WDI in its petition most certainly do not represent or speak for a large number of women’s rights and feminist movements in India, as also asserted by feminist scholars,” the alliance said.
It said cisgender women and transgender persons had shared organising spaces in organisations, state-level networks and common feminist and democratic struggles for years. It reaffirmed its solidarity with transgender persons who had protested against the 2026 amendment since March and challenged it before the Supreme Court.
ALIFA said it viewed women as including both cisgender and transgender women and upheld gender self-determination as a basic feminist principle. It extended its support to transgender women and men, hijra, non-binary, intersex, thirunangai, thirunambi, nupa manba, nupi manbi, jogappa, kinnar, mangalamukhi, khwaja-sira, aravani and other gender-diverse persons.
“ALIFA asserts that legal rights must link to gender, not sex: with the root cause of women’s oppression being patriarchy rather than biology,” the statement said.
The alliance said the struggle for gender justice required recognising the shared gender-related oppression faced by cisgender women and transgender persons rather than setting them against each other. It traced exclusionary politics to what it described as a Brahminical worldview that treats characteristics associated with birth, including gender, caste and disability, as primary and unchangeable.
It accused WDI India of presenting exclusion as protection by seeking to deny transgender women legal recognition in the name of defending women’s equality.
“The feminist fight for rights is always inclusive and never a zero-sum game,” it said, adding that feminism could not advance by excluding transgender, non-binary and gender-diverse persons from the promise of equality.
ALIFA has set out six demands: repeal of the 2026 amendment and support for challenges to its constitutional validity; rejection of attempts to invoke cisgender women’s rights to restrict transgender and gender-diverse persons’ rights; a critical review of what it calls the unconstitutional arguments in WDI India’s petition; recognition of every person’s right to self-determine their gender identity without discriminatory medical or administrative gatekeeping; rejection of biological sex as the basis for women’s rights and protections; and collective feminist engagement across differences to confront gender-based oppression without creating new forms of exclusion.
The alliance said women’s rights and transgender rights were not competing claims but mutually reinforcing struggles against patriarchy. It reaffirmed its support for the constitutional rights to dignity, personhood and gender self-determination of transgender, intersex, non-binary and gender-diverse persons.
Also Read: Amid criticisms of ‘reversing progress’, President gives assent to Transgender Persons Bill
The Transgender Persons (Protection of Rights) Amendment Bill, 2026, was introduced in the Lok Sabha on 13 March and passed by the House on 24 March and the Rajya Sabha on 25 March, despite Opposition protests and demands for its referral to a select committee.
The amendment drew protests from transgender persons, queer activists and civil society groups over its narrowing of the definition of a transgender person to include certain socio-cultural groups, such as Kinnar, Hijra, Aravani and Jogta, as well as intersex persons. Experts and activists also objected to provisions requiring an invasive medical examination by a government-appointed board to obtain an identity certificate, raising concerns over privacy and the right to life.
A day after its passage in the Rajya Sabha, ALIFA and the National Alliance for Justice, Accountability and Rights wrote to President Droupadi Murmu, asking her to withhold assent on grounds of constitutional violations and procedural irregularities.
The amendment also had repercussions before it became law, with reports of transgender persons being evicted from their homes and losing livelihood opportunities. Following its passage, the alliance said, avenues of support available to transgender people had been cut off. It also raised concerns that diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives, foreign funding for queer work and community support could be criminalised under the amended law.
(Edited by Dese Gowda)
