Service Can't Be Terminated During Maternity Leave: Punjab & Haryana High Court

The Punjab & Haryana High Court has said that the service of an employee who is on maternity leave can't be terminated during the period of leave.Justice Harsimran Singh Sethi said, "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."The Court was hearing a batch of pleas seeking grants of benefit of regularization of services of the petitioners.After hearing the submissions, the Court clarified that the temporary employee cannot be replaced by another set of temporary employee,"the petitioners will not be replaced by another set of temporary employee on the same terms and conditions on which the petitioners are working.""The petitioners can be replaced by the regular employees. It may be further noticed that the direction to allow the petitioners to continue in service is only qua the petitioners, who are actually working as of now and in the case of the petitioners whose services have already been terminated," it added.During the hearing the Court noted that in another plea an employee who was on maternity leave, the leave was curtailed while terminating her services.Justice Sethi noted that 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.Consequently, it directed that she 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 respondents are hereby directed to pay salary to petitioner-Balvir Kaur for the maternity period for which, such leave was already sanctioned by the competent authority, which was wrongly curtailed to terminate the services of petitioner-Balvir Kaur," the Court said."Let the arrears of salary to Balvir Kaur be released within a period of 08 weeks," said the Court while disposing of the plea.Ravisan and others v. State of Punjab and others [along with other pleas] Mr. V.K. Shukla, Advocate with Mr. Ashish Gupta, Advocate for the petitioners in CWP-9174 & 32212 of 2018.Mr. Anshul Pareek, Advocate for Ms. Preeti Grover, Advocate for petitioners in CWP-12851-2018 & CWP-17966-2019.Mr. Pawan Kumar, Advocate for Mr. Saurabh Arora, Advocate for the petitioners in CWP-11321-2018.Ms. Jashandeep Kaur, Advocate for Mr. Akhilesh Vyas, Advocate for the petitioner in CWP-35206-2019.Mr. M.S. Sachdev, Advocate for the petitioners in CWP-2178-2019 (joined through Video conferencing).Mr. Harbans Lal Sharma, Advocate for the petitioner in CWP-1055-2019.Ms. Akshita Chauhan, DAG, Punjab.Mr. Anurag Goyal, Advocate for respondents No.2 & 3 in CWP-35206 & 36376-2019.Citation: 2025 LiveLaw (PH) 67Click here to read/download the order

Service Can't Be Terminated During Maternity Leave: Punjab & Haryana High Court

Aiman J. Chishti

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