These two transgenders are leading the fight for inclusion in state police jobs

Nikita Mukhydal outside Mumbai Mantralaya when she handed over a petition to CM Eknath Shinde to allow trans persons the right to apply for state police jobs

Four years ago Nikita Mukhydal, 35, was an entrepreneur, running a beauty parlour and an eatery in Pune. In her downtime, she pursued her passion for dance, dabbling in Lavani, Bollywood item songs and Marathi folk dance for one-off shows. The earnings were good, by her own admission. And yet, when the opportunity arrived to switch to being a salaried professional, she didn't waste a minute. Since eight months, Mukhydal has been manning the Pimpri-Chinchwad Municipal Corporation office as security personnel. She shuttles between the main gate, corporator's office and scanner machine, in an eight-hour shift that lasts from 10 am to 6 pm. What some would consider a brain dead job is one she excitedly embraced, because it brought her closer to a dream. "Har kisi ko vardi ka craze hai," she tells us over a phone call from her residence. And the uniform, she knew, would bring her the respect that had eluded her. Mukhydal, a trans woman, saved up funds from her dancing assignments to foot the bill for a sex change surgery she underwent between 2017 and 2018.

When she heard that recruitment to the state police force were going to be underway, she thought transgender persons like herself stood a chance. "The recruitment of 27 transgender people as private security guards at the municipal corporation office had become big news. We had met politicians too. I was hopeful that the police recruitment would offer us openings. But when I accessed the online application form last November, I realised that the third gender option was missing," she says. When she called the helpline of the Director General of Police, she was told she couldn't apply for the position of female constable.

A joint petition by Nikita Mukhydal (left) and Arya Pujari has paved the way for recruitment of trans persons in Maharashtra police

Mukhydal's inspiration to join the force came when she became a member of the Police Mitra Sangathan or Friends of the Police initiative, which gives civilians with a clean social record the opportunity to assist police beat staff in traffic and crowd management, safety of women and prevention of crime. "I was associated with it for five years, and often had officers tell me I should be a police woman."

Mukhydal realised that the answer lay in travelling to Mumbai where the decision makers were. She made her way to Mantralaya, and thanks to her security guard uniform, didn't stick out. "The Cabinet session was on that day," she remembers, "and I somehow managed to hand my petition to CM Eknath Shinde." Little came out of that.

Lavani performances have seen Arya Pujari through tough times. She is confident that trans persons can pull off both desk and field work

Two hundred kilometres away, a kindred spirit was battling the same angst as Mukhydal. Hindi films that cast a police officer as protagonist, preferably riding a Bullet, aviators on his nose, made Sangli resident Arya Pujari, 23, vow when she was back in school that she'd become a police officer. Except, this was when Pujari was a ‘he'.

Aghast at Pujari's feminine ways, the family took the child to a doctor, who in unusual wisdom counselled them not to pressure Pujari into embracing the gender assigned at birth. "A huge fight broke between my family and the doctor". An incident with male classmates when she was in Class 11 had left Pujari traumatised. She had performed the Lavani at her school function, dressed as a woman. A few days later, a group of boys tried dragging Pujari into a garden, but fled when they saw a police control room van approach. It was only after Pujari's sister was married that her parents felt comfortable allowing her to grow her hair, and dress in female garb. Performing Lavani during Ganesh Chaturthi and Navratri celebrations allowed her to come into her own, and offered the chance to earn. "It was the one plea my parents had, don't beg on the streets like the trangenders do," she says. "But I had my eyes set on the big goal; mujhe vardi pehen ni hi thi." To get through depressive phases, Pujari would scour the web for stories of inspiration. Which is how she learnt of Tamil Nadu's Prithika Yasini, India's first transgender police officer who joined the force in 2016.

When her first attempt to apply to the police force failed in 2018, she approached Muskan Sangathan, a Sangli-headquartered social organisation that works for the rights of queer people. It was through them that a petition was filed in the Bombay High Court seeking implementation of the Supreme Court's directives in the 2014 National Legal Service Authority (NALSA) judgment asking for states to reserve some seats for transgender persons in educational institutions and government jobs. Sudha Patil, its general secretary, tells mid-day, "A lot of queer persons approaching us would express their desire to work but weren't
allowed to."

Pujari, with help from Muskan Sangathan, first petitioned the Maharashtra Administrative Tribunal (MAT) seeking inclusion of trans persons in the upcoming police recruitment drive. Mukhydal heard of this, and appealed too.

Although the state challenged the order passed by MAT directing it to create a provision for transgenders in the application form, for posts under the Home department, and directed the government to fix a criterion for physical standards and tests for persons of the third gender, it had to eventually give in. Last December, the state told the court that transgender people could apply for the post of police constables and would frame guidelines setting the rules and standards for them, by February 2023. The option would be added to the gender column in the online application form and two posts for constables would be set aside, it assured.

Mukhydal is in the mood to fight for equal rights, buoyant with the court's support. "My siblings and I have the same set of parents, sanskaar and surname. We belong to the same village, went to the same school. They have a legal right to work where they please. And I don't."

She hopes that the state takes an evolved approach to drafting selection criteria for trans people. "We hope it matches the criteria that persons born as women must meet. Because we were born as the masculine gender, we cannot equate with male applicants who have to run for 1,600 m," she argues. The police recruitment drive test for women usually involves an 800 m and 100 m run, and has a long jump and shot put leg to it.

"Three hours in the morning starting 5 am before I ready for my day job," says Mukhydal, about her current practice regimen. "At night, I give two hours to ground practice and study for the written test."

The current recruitment drive saw applications from 18 lakh aspirants for 18.331 posts in the state police, and of these, 73 were from transgender persons. Will Pujari and Mukhydal make the cut?