Contractual employees are entitled to maternity leave, reiterates Orissa High Court
In August 2022, the Orissa High Court had ruled in favour of a contractual employee of the Department of Health and Family Welfare, whose maternity leave application from August 17, 2016, to February 12, 2017 had been rejected by the department. The State government appealed against the decision of the single-judge Bench. Since the employee was governed by the terms of her contract, she was not entitled to maternity benefit, the State government maintained
Also Read | Maternity benefits: Differentiation not permissible between regular, contractual employees: Calcutta HC
The Bench said that the Supreme Court and several other High Courts in the country had passed judgments saying contractual employees were entitled to maternity leave based on the Maternity Benefit Act, 1961. Rejecting the contention of the State government that only women civil servants were entitled to avail maternity leave, the Bench said 'women employees, for the purpose of availing such benefit, do constitute one homogenous class, and their artificial bifurcation founded on status of appointment falls foul of Article 14 of the Constitution'.
Declining any further indulgence, the Division Bench of Justices Dixit Krishna Shripad and Mruganka Sekhar Sahoo broadly agreed with the reasoning of the single judge Bench that maternity leave with pay or comparable social benefits were to be assured by the state through policies and programmes as India is a signatory nation to the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, and the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women.
'These conventions highlight the social significance of 'maternity', and the role of both parents in the family structure and in the upbringing of children. It is said that God could not be everywhere and, therefore, he created mothers. The idea of maternity leave is structured on 'zero separation' between the lactating mother and the breast-feeding baby,' the High Court said, adding that child psychiatrists and obstetricians were of the considered opinion that the physical companionship of mother and baby is mutually advantageous, and promotes bonding between the two, which is essential for their well-being.
'A lactating mother has a fundamental right to breastfeed her baby during its formative years. Similarly, baby has a fundamental right to be breastfed and brought about in a reasonably good condition. These two important rights form an amalgam from which the State's obligation to provide maternity benefits, such as paid leave to the employees, within the permissible resources, would arise,' the Orissa High Court said.
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Jayaprakash Narayan administering oath to Janata Party MPs at Raj Ghat, New Delhi in March 25, 1977 — Socialist Swaraj (@SocialistSwj) May 8, 2023 JP and his party were equally committed to establishing a secular state. In his foreword to the 'Socialist draft', he urged the framers of the Constitution to insert the word 'secular' as the character of the state. The Draft Constitution of the Indian Republic, the first edition of which came out in early 1948, clearly advocates a secular India. It elaborates on the question of why secularism was non-negotiable: '…In the Middle Ages the society was dominated by religion and so the state assumed theocratic character in some countries. The state was, thus, made subservient to the church and heretics were made to suffer inquisitions and persecutions. But the religious bond failed to stop internecine feudal wars, while crusades added to human misery. 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They pretended to be running into each other either in Delhi's Connaught Place or Khan Market and then settled for a coffee or lunch, for fear of spies gathering information. Ravi Visvesvaraya Sharada Prasad had written about it in an article earlier: 'To avoid Sanjay Gandhi's ubiquitous informers, my father and my uncle would arrange to accidentally bump into each other while buying vegetables behind Khan Market or meet by chance during early morning walks in the Lodhi Gardens, where they would speak to each other quietly in Telugu under an isolated clump of trees. But every time the negotiators thought that they had reached an agreement, JP would shift the goalposts. Radhakrishna and Dasgupta were never clear as to what JP expected them to achieve, let alone what he wanted from Indira Gandhi.' JP finally came up with the demand that Indira Gandhi resign as prime minister. But the talks between the teams did not end until Gandhi complained that JP was getting very close to the RSS and he responded, 'If the RSS are fascist, so am I.' Remembering People's Leader, #Jayaprakash_Narayan on his birth anniversary 💠A visionary advocate of 'Participatory Governance' who was a leader by example during the #QuitIndiaMovement and championed 'Sampoorna Kranti' for societal transformation — Ministry of Information and Broadcasting (@MIB_India) October 11, 2023 Historians have long documented how the RSS became the bone of contention between JP and Indira Gandhi, who had otherwise converged on many issues, except perhaps on institutionalised corruption. Now, short of national icons in the pantheon of Hindutva political stalwarts, Sangh organisations have not wasted any occasion to praise the man who gave them their first opportunity to earn political legitimacy. The Bharatiya Shikshan Mandal, a feeder organisation of the RSS, had not long ago demanded that Jawaharlal Nehru University be renamed after JP. RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat himself has often invoked JP's purported affinity for his organisation, recounting how when JP visited an RSS camp in New Delhi, the leader of the 'Total Revolution' was deeply impressed with the discipline of its cadres. As they clamour for the words 'socialist' and 'secular' to be erased from the Preamble, do the RSS and the BJP know that these were ideals dear to their beloved JP? Will they honour his wish? The author thanks Rakesh Ankit of Loughborough University and Ravi Visvesvaraya Sharada Prasad, son of HY Sharada Prasad, the late civil servant and media adviser to Indira Gandhi, for valuable inputs for this article.
