Orissa High Court's BIG remark: Contractual employees entitled to maternity leave

Mint

2 days ago

Rejecting a writ appeal of the state government, a Division Bench of Orissa High Court recently upheld a three-year-old judgment passed by a single-judge Bench stating that maternity leave and associated benefits cannot be denied to a woman employed by the state on contractual basis.
In a recent ruling, the Division Bench of Justices Dixit Krishna Shripad and Mruganka Sekhar Sahoo affirmed the August 2022 decision of a single-judge Bench, which had ruled in favour of a contractual employee of the Health and Family Welfare Department whose maternity leave application from August 17, 2016, to February 12, 2017 had been rejected by her department.
The employee, being governed by the terms of a contract, was not entitled to maternity benefits, the state government had argued while challenging the earlier decision.
However, the Division Bench declined to accept this position and upheld the reasoning of the single-judge ruling.
"Maternity leave with pay or comparable social benefits are to be assured by the state through its policies and programmes, as India is a signatory to the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR) and the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW)," the court observed.
The Bench emphasised the social significance of maternity and the fundamental role of both parents in child-rearing.
"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 a lactating mother and a breastfeeding baby," the judgment stated.
Citing the views of child psychiatrists and obstetricians, the HC noted that physical companionship between mother and child is mutually beneficial and promotes healthy bonding, which is essential for their wellbeing.
"A lactating mother has a fundamental right to breastfeed her baby during its formative years. Similarly, the baby has a fundamental right to be breastfed and brought up 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, arises—within permissible resources," the court held.
Previous judgments of the Supreme Court and other High Courts, which have affirmed that contractual employees are entitled to maternity leave under the Maternity Benefit Act, 1961, were also referred to by the Bench.
Rejecting the state government's contention that only regular women civil servants qualify for maternity leave, the court observed: "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."