Punjab & Haryana High Court has said that the service for an employee who is on maternity leave cannot be terminated during the period of leave.

Justice Harsimran Singh Sethi said: “When an employee was on maternity leave, the said period of maternity leave could not have been limited to terminate the service for an employee and the employee’s services could have been distributed after she went after using the advantage of maternity leave.”

The court heard a party grounds that seek contributions to regulate the petitioners’ services.

After hearing the submissions, the court clarified that the temporary employees 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 that the petitioners work with.”

“The petitioners can be replaced by the ordinary employees. It may be further noticeable that the direction to allow the petitioners to continue in service is only the petitioners, who actually work from now on and in the case of the petitioners whose services have already been completed,” added it.

During the hearing, the Court noted that in another foundation of an employee who was on maternity leave, the leave was limited while completing her services.

Justice Sethi noted that no valid justification has come from the respondents to limit the period of maternity leave to terminate the petitioner’s services.

Consequently, it led to her to be entitled to the salary for the period she was granted maternity leave and the order for termination of her services will apply from the date she completed the said period.

“The respondents are hereby directed to pay salaries to the petitioner-baler for the motherhood for which, such leave was already sanctioned by the competent authority, which was incorrectly limited to terminate the services of the petitioner-baler,” the court said.

“Let the residue of salary to Balvir Kaur be released within a period of 08 weeks,” said the court while rejecting the foundation.

Ravisan and others v. State of Punjab et al. (together with other grounds)

Mr. VK Shukla, advocates with Mr. Ashish Gupta, advocates for the petitioners in CWP-9174 & 32212 from 2018.

Mr Anshul Pareek, advocate for Preeti Grover, advocate for petitioners in CWP-12851-2018 & CWP-17966-2019.

Pawan Kumar, advocate for Saurabh Arara, advocates for the petitioners in CWP-1121-2018.

Jashingeep Kaur, advocate for Akhilesh Vyas, advocate for the petitioner in CWP-35206-2019.

Mr. Sachdev, advocates for the petitioners in CWP-2178-2019 (united through video conferences).

Mr. Harbans Lal Sharma, advocate for the petitioner in CWP-1055-2019.

Akshita Chauhan, Dag, Punjab.

Mr. Anurag Goyal, advocate for respondents no. 2 & 3 in CWP-35206 & 36376-2019.

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