Kathmandu (Pahichan) September 17 – Blue Diamond Society which is working to ensure the rights of gender and sexual minority has entered into 16 years. The organization was established in 2001 by Sunil Babu Pant at a time when there was not identity of this community.

The organization was registered at Lalitpur Administration Office on September 12, 2001. There was the lack of sufficient numbers of this community and Pant registered the organization gathering citizenship of the family members. Pant’s brother and sisters were the members of organization. Pant used to meet Pinky Gurung, Manisha Dhakal, Parshu Ram Rai but they were not founding members.

After a year of registration of office, there was Annual General meeting and formed new working committee led by Pant. In the new working committee Sangram Hamal was Vice-chairman, Manisha Dhakal was Secretary and Bishnuraj Pant was Treasurer of organization.  Pant started the awareness campaign taking some assistance from FHI. Pant also increased the assistances from other organizations as well.

After that, organization started to work with staffs.  The process of establishing office was started when Panta was the Chairman of the organization. Now, there are 53 branch offices at 31 districts of the country. Now, BDS is one of the biggest NGO of Nepal.

Chairman Gurung said members of this community should feel pride forgetting what happened in the past.  “We did a lot of labour in the past,” Gurung said remembering the past, “Now we feel pride, we have to preserve the achievement made in the past and fight for further progress,” said Gurung. Gurung said there is a need of formulating laws according to the constitutional provisions.  Bishnuraj Pant has his own memories.

He said Pant’s efforts also gathered the support from many people. “Donor agencies started to give assistance and activities were increased accordingly,” said Pant. According to him, this led people to get the membership of this organization. Members of this community also started to disclose their identity. He is also called by people as a Bhinaju.

Deputy Director of Blue Diamond Society Parshuram Rai said there has been a lot of achievement in the recent decade. “After the Supreme Court verdict, members of this community have started to get citizenship and passport on the basis of gender identity,” Rai said adding that rights of this community have been mentioned in the constitution. According to him, a government committee has submitted a report on same-sex marriage.