The Rajasthan High Court has ruled that giving women employees maternity leave of only 90 days instead of the 180 days mandated by the Maternity Benefits Act, 1961 goes against the fundamental rights as stated in Article 14 and 21 of the Constitution of India.
A petition was filed by a pregnant woman employed as a conductor with the Rajasthan State Road Transport Corporation (RSRTC), who wanted the department to extend her maternity leave from 90 days to 180.
In response, the Court stated that maternity benefits were integral to a woman’s dignity and were a fundamental right. Therefore, to keep a woman from enjoying that right is as good as violating her fundamental right to bear a child and breaches the principles of social justice, says the report by Live Law.
The Court, therefore, has said that the Regulation 74 of RSRTC Employees Service Regulations, 1965 (“1965 Regulations”) needs to be amended in line with the Maternity Benefits Act, 1961, which was amended in 2017, making 26 weeks of maternity leave available to working women instead of the earlier 12 weeks, for the first two children. Since the Maternity Benefit Act including the Amendment Act is applicable to every organisation that has 10 or more members in its workforce, its impact is fairly wide.
As per the Maternity Benefit (Amendment) Act, 2017, women who have completed 80 days in the 12 months immediately preceding the date of her expected delivery is entitled to maternity leaves for a maximum of 26 weeks. Of these, not more than eight weeks shall be preceding the expected date of her delivery.
