Organisers said that while they celebrated growing acceptance of LGBT in the country they also wanted to highlight ongoing discrimination.

Harsh Aggarwal, who runs a digital marketing company in New Delhi, said that there has been progress, though it has come slowly. "But it's happening," he said.

"There are more people who are coming out without masks. Society also is respecting us. That's the progress," he said.

Activists had cheered in 2009 when the New Delhi High Court declared Section 377 of the Penal Code unconstitutional.

But the judgment was overturned four years later when India's Supreme Court decided that amending or repealing Section 377 should be a matter left to Parliament, not the judiciary.