State Women’s Commission Chairperson P. Sathidevi has stressed the need for the student community to realise that there are several individuals among them with varied gender status and sexuality, and that they should be considered as citizens of the country with equal rights.
Inaugurating ‘Anushchetham 15’ (Article-15), a two-day residential camp for NSS volunteers organised by the NSS unit of Government Law College, Kozhikode, on Saturday, she pointed out that though the LGBTIQA+ community constitutes less than 2% of the Indian population, the country belonged to them as well, and hence, the constitutional rights too.
“The recent developments related to the community have forced us to even rewrite some old laws in the Indian Penal Code,” she said, adding that gender was not superficial, and that differing sexualities were not “diseases” that could be cured.
