The number of transgender students in India’s higher education institutions has risen five-fold over two years. However, this figure is minuscule at best.
Through the 2022-’23 academic year, less than 1,500 transgender students were enrolled in the country’s colleges and universities, according to data tabled by the government in the Rajya Sabha during the 2025 Parliament Monsoon Session. These figures were drawn from provisional estimates provided by the All India Survey on Higher Education (AISHE), an annual Ministry of Education report compiled on the basis of data from colleges, universities, and standalone institutions in India. (The last official AISHE report was filed for the academic year 2021-’22.)
By contrast, only 302 transgender students were enrolled in Indian higher education institutions during the 2021-’22 academic year, AISHE data shows.
The provisional data pertaining to the 2022-’23 academic year shows that over half of India’s transgender students were studying in four states—Uttar Pradesh, Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh, and Telangana. In eight states and union territories, the number of enrolled students was less than ten, including in Bihar, one of India’s most populous states.
Between the academic years 2020-’21, and 2022-’23, the number of transgender students in higher education institutions rose in all states for which data is reported for all three years with one exception—West Bengal, where there were 25 enrollments in 2020-’21 academic year, 31 in the year after, and 17 in the 2022-’23 academic year.
Two union territories have registered a drop too—including Delhi, which introduced affirmative policies in education. In 2014, after the Supreme Court upheld the rights of trans persons to express their self-identified gender, Delhi University introduced a third column under the gender category, allowing transgender students to enrol without forcing them to identify as either male or female. Yet, nearly a decade later, only 15 students opted for transgender category in the national capital during the 2022-’23 academic year, a decline from 28 students in the previous year. Many transgender students may not be comfortable choosing the transgender category for enrollment, fearing prejudice at educational institutions.