Gay rights

·         On August 8, 2008 favouring the rights of homosexuals, Health Minister Anbumani Ramadoss sought the removal of provisions in the Indian Penal Code (Section 377 of the IPC) that classifies sex between two men as a criminal offence.

·         Addressing the XVII International AIDS Conference in Mexico City,  India’s health minister Anbumani Ramadoss said Section 377 IPC, which penalises men who have sex with men (MSMs), must go.

·         Under the IPC, sex between two men is considered "unnatural".

Mission IAS’2009

·         The Delhi High Court is hearing a petition by Naz Foundation, an NGO that has challenged arrests under the act. Though the health ministry had supported their call to remove the law, the home ministry was not in favour of it.

·         Considering the matter to be "serious", the court had asked the two ministries to sit together and sort out the matter.

·         In his speech at the global AIDS summit, Ramadoss said: "Structural discrimination against those who are vulnerable to HIV such as sex workers and men having sex with men must be removed if our prevention, care and treatment programmes are to succeed.

·         "The key to overcoming the HIV epidemic is to take HIV services to those on the margins of society and we can only do that in an enabling environment."

·         India has about 2.5 million HIV infected people and many states have started recording a stabilisation of the epidemic