Chennai, March 25 (BPNS)

Madras High Court directed the Tamil Nadu government to sanction maternity leave to a woman employee to her third child from remarriage.

Justice Parthiban of the Madras High Court ordered the state government to sanction maternity leave from October 11, 2021, to October 10, 2022, with full pay and all other benefits including full attendance.

The order of the Madras High court was following a writ petition filed by the government employee, K. Umadevi who sought to quash the order of the District Educational Officer of Dharmapuri district of Tamil Nadu, dated August 28, 2021 not sanctioning the maternity leave.

The District Educational Officer had rejected her plea for maternity leave citing that a government servant is eligible for maternity leave only for two surviving children. Umadevi had married a person Suresh in 2006 and the couple had two children but they got divorced in 2017 and the children were living with Suresh.

Umadevi married person Rajkumar after getting a divorce from Suresh and she became pregnant in the second wedlock and applied for maternity leave which was disallowed by the educational authorities.

Justice Parthiban in his order pointed out a Government order issued on June 20, 2018, which extended the benefit of second delivery even if a government servant had given birth to twins earlier and said, “The government has earlier recognized such extreme cases and this is one such case wherein as a fallout from the first marriage, the petitioner had to part with her children born out of her first marriage. Therefore it cannot be said that the petitioner is having two surviving children at all.”

The judge further said, “The Court, therefore, holds that the petitioner is deemed to have not having two surviving children and hence the court allows the women government employee to be given maternity leave with full payment.”

The court also directed the government to sanction maternity leave for the period claimed as admissible within a period of two weeks.