Delhi High Court: maternity leave cannot cost a woman her role or her next promotion

The Delhi High Court has held that the Maternity Benefit Act protects more than a woman's job and her pay. Justice Sachin Datta, in an order dated 31 August, said a woman returning from maternity leave is ordinarily entitled to the same post she held when she left. If that post is genuinely gone for organisational reasons that can be shown, she must be placed in a role that matches pay, grade, status, duties, managerial authority and promotion chances.

The case was brought by a chartered accountant who went on leave as an accounting manager at HashiCorp and came back to treasury work that the court treated as clerical. She resigned and sued through advocate Parul Singh. The court directed the company to pay Rs 10 lakh in compensation, about four months' salary on the court's own arithmetic, and Rs 1.5 lakh in costs.

What Section 12 now means in Delhi

Employers have long argued that the statute guards continuity and wages, not the exact chair. Justice Datta rejected that reading. Protection, he wrote, covers the substantive incidents of employment: the nature of duties, grade, functional status, reporting line, supervisory load, and the right to be considered for appraisal and promotion. A request for adjusted hours or duties after childbirth is not a waiver of that protection.

He tied the statute to Articles 14, 15, 21 and 42 of the Constitution. Pregnancy and maternity, on that reading, cannot be used as grounds for demotion, loss of status, or a blocked promotion path. "Under no circumstance, can maternity be allowed to become a source of ignominy at the workplace," the order said.

A gap in the central rules

The court noted that neither the Maternity Benefit Act, 1961, nor the Code on Social Security, 2020, sets out a full scheme for the weeks after a woman returns. It directed the Centre to frame rules or issue directions within six months. The list is practical: pregnancy-related workplace accommodation, protection of role and status, return-to-work parity, lactation support, a grievance channel with timelines, inspection standards, and a bar on quiet retaliation.

That direction is the part that will outlive this one company. Private employers in Delhi now have a High Court paragraph they will be quoted in the next similar fight. The Union government has a six-month clock to write the missing chapter, or to explain why it has not.

For human-resources desks the immediate change is documentary. If a returning employee is moved, the file needs a bona fide organisational reason and a true like-for-like comparison on authority and promotion, not only on the salary line.