When the court said maternity leave cannot be granted to a “professional course”, it deepened the notion that in a woman’s life professionalism and family cannot go hand in hand.
A pregnant student in her fourth semester at Delhi University’s law faculty was recently denied relief by the high court and the Supreme Court after she was not allowed to sit for a semester exam due to low attendance.
The student was short on attendance because she had taken two months leave on account of being in the last stages of pregnancy and delivering her baby.
In rejecting the young woman’s plea, the Delhi High Court on 15 May had noted that maternity leave cannot be put in a different compartment for the purposes of relaxation of attendance.
The judge said that LLB is “a special professional course where no relaxation can be granted contrary to the Bar Council of India Rules, which specifically governs the field”. Rule 12 of Rules of Legal Education of the Bar Council of India prescribes a mandatory attendance of 70 per cent in each semester of LLB.
Although the law faculty is part of the Delhi University, it follows separate guidelines set by the Bar Council.
The rules that came into force in 2008 include no provision for maternity leave for pregnant students. This is starkly different from the Delhi University rules, which provide female students with the benefit of maternity leave under Section 2(9) (d) of Ordinance VII of Chapter III of Delhi University Act of 1922.
“In the case of a married woman student who is granted maternity leave, in calculating the total number of lectures delivered in the College or in the University, as the case may be, for her course of study in each academic year, the number of lectures in each subject delivered during the period of her maternity leave shall not be taken into account,” the Delhi University provision reads.
Delhi University is not alone in granting this provision to its students. In 2017, the Haryana government decided to grant maternity leave of up to 45 days to married women studying in colleges and universities across the state, and to ensure that they are able to complete their courses.
Similarly, the human resource development ministry in 2016 relaxed several rules for women candidates pursuing research degrees, including allowing a 240-day maternity break from their studies.
It also allowed women candidates to transfer research data to new institutions in case they shifted place of work or residence because of personal or professional reasons.
The question then is this: why have the Bar Council rules on education lagged behind in granting students such a fundamental right?
According to the Directive Principles of State Policy, under the Constitution, the state is required to make provisions for securing just and humane conditions of work and for maternity relief.
When the high court judge remarked that similar standards of maternity leave cannot be applied to a “professional course”, it only deepened the notion that in a woman’s life professionalism and family cannot go hand in hand. It also builds a hierarchy among various college courses, and implies that the so-called ‘professional courses’ are somewhat more exacting than the others.
This incident is a stark reminder of the notion that as a woman you have to pick one or the other. You simply cannot have it all.
Divya
Very well written .