While giving a historic judgement, the Punjab & Haryana High Court has ruled that the services of an employee on maternity leave cannot be terminated during the leave period recently.
Termination During Maternity Leave Not Allowed
Further elaborating that once maternity leave is sanctioned, it cannot be curtailed to facilitate termination, said the Justice Harsimran Singh Sethi who presided over the court.
Moving ahead, the court further directed the state to pay arrears of salary to the affected employee.
They ruled that the termination order would be effective only after the completion of the sanctioned leave, in its judgement.
According to the court, “Once an employee was on maternity leave, the said period of maternity leave could not have been curtailed so as to terminate the service of an employee and the services of the employee could have been dispensed with upon her joining after availing the benefit of maternity leave.”
How Did This Happen?
The judgment came, while the court was hearing a batch of petitions.
In these petitions, the petitioners were engaged as temporary employees who sought regularization of their services.
They further argued that they had been continuously working in their respective positions without any interim protection from the court and demonstrated that their services were still required.
They should not be replaced by another set of temporary employees under the same terms and conditions, as such replacement would cause them undue hardship, they contended.
Out of these petitioners, Balvir Kaur, specifically challenged her termination as she was on maternity leave.
According to her, the termination was unjustified and violated established legal protections for maternity leave.
It appears that the respondent State, relied on a prior ruling (Bikramjit Singh and Others v. State of Punjab and Others), which was delivered by the High Court’s Coordinate Bench, in which a similar claim for regularization was rejected.
The petitioners could not claim an absolute right to continued employment, contended the respondents.
It appears that they did not provide a valid justification for curtailing Balvir Kaur’s maternity leave to terminate her employment.
The petitioners, who were currently working, were allowed to continue in service until the work of their respective posts ceased, subject to satisfactory performance, the court directed in its ruling.
“Keeping in view the settled principle of law that the temporary employee cannot be replaced by another set of temporary employees, the petitioners will not be replaced by another set of temporary employees on the same terms and conditions on which the petitioners are working,” the court reaffirmed.
Further, the maternity leave was already sanctioned by the competent authority, which was wrongly curtailed to terminate the services of petitioner, the bench categorically held while talking on the case of Balvir Kaur.
“No valid justification has come from the respondents so as to curtail the period of maternity leave in order to terminate the services of petitioner-Balvir Kaur, hence, the petitioner-Balvir Kaur will be entitled to the salary for the period she was granted maternity leave and the order of termination of her services will be effective from the date she completed the said period,” the court ruled.
Concluding the matter, the court directed the state to release Kaur’s pending salary within eight weeks.
They have also noted that petitioner-Balvir Kaur was entitled to receive her full salary for the leave period.
