Instead of empowering our mothers, law-keepers find new ways to deprive them.

Madras: A woman employee who already has twins from her first pregnancy cannot claim maternity benefits for her second pregnancy, the Madras High Court has ruled.

According to reports, the order came on an appeal by the Union Home Ministry against the ruling of a single judge in June 2019 who had extended maternity benefits to a woman employee of the Central Industrial Security Force (CISF). The judge had passed the order based on the rules governing the service of Tamil Nadu government officers. In its appeal, the Central government had opposed this and had stated that for a CISF employee, the appropriate rules that would apply would be the Central Civil Services (Leave) Rules and not the rules governing government employees of Tamil Nadu.

The Principal Bench consisting of Chief Justice AP Sahi and Justice Subramonium Prasad stated that the delivery of twins shall be considered two deliveries and not as a single simultaneous act. “As per existing rules, a woman can avail such benefits only for her first two deliveries. Even otherwise it is debatable as to whether the delivery is not a second delivery but a third one, in as much as ordinarily when twins are born they are delivered one after another, and their age and their inter-se elderly status is also determined by virtue of the gap of time between their arrivals, which amounts to two deliveries and not one simultaneous act,” the order said. The bench also added that this fact has been overlooked by the single judge and hence set aside his order.

However, the judges also stated that if the government had the power to grant exceptions to their service rules, they could consider it so that a child is not deprived of benefits due to technicality in rules or its parents’ choice to have another child.