The Supreme Court on Monday issued notice to the Centre on a petition seeking to enhance legal safeguards for intersex children, reported Bar and Bench.

Intersex individuals are those born with sexual anatomy that does not fit the accepted definitions of female or male.

Intersex rights activist Gopi Shankar told the Supreme Court in the petition that intersex children in the country are being made to undergo unregulated sex-reassignment surgeries.

The petitioner said that in many states, sex-reassignment surgeries were being conducted with the consent of the parents of infants, Live Law reported. It is only in Tamil Nadu that the High Court has banned such procedures till children attain the age of giving informed consent, the petitioner said.

In 2019, after the Madras High Court’s intervention, Tamil Nadu became the first state in India to ban sex reassignment surgeries on infants and children.

In its order, the High Court had said children must be given time and space to discover their true gender identity.

The High Court’s ruling was also based on a complaint forwarded by Shankar to the National Human Rights Commission, which highlighted the practice of sex reassignment surgeries.

The commission forwarded the complaint to the Union Ministry of Health and Family Welfare. The ministry, in its response, said that the surgeries had been done with the consent of parents or guardians.

However, the High Court called this response “strange”. The court said that consent of the parents could not be considered as the consent of the child. It added that neither the father nor the mother can “claim suzeranity” over a child.

Based on the judgment, the Tamil Nadu government said that intersex surgeries will only be allowed in life-threatening situations, which will be decided after the recommendations of a committee formed by the Directorate of Medical Education.