‘Women staff having surrogacy child to get maternity leave’

Shimla, March 4 : The Himachal Pradesh High Court on Thursday ruled that women contractual employees of the state who have a child through surrogacy will be entitled to maternity leave.
A Division Bench of Justices Tarlok Singh Chauhan and Sandeep Sharma passed the order on the petition filed of teacher Sushma Devi of Kullu district, who is working on contract and blessed with a baby on September 10, 2020 through surrogacy.
She applied for maternity leave, but no action was taken on her application.
The court observed that a female contractual or ad hoc employee is entitled to maternity leave on a par with female regular employee on the grounds of fair play and social justice and there cannot be any discrimination.
“Even in the case of adoption the adoptive mother does not give birth to the child, yet the necessity of bonding of the mother with the adopted child has been recognised by the Central government,” the court said.
It observed that Article 42 of the Constitution provides the state shall make provision for securing just and humane conditions of work and for maternity relief and it was long felt that the working women were unable to depute their time towards their children due to exigencies of service.