The court has sent a questionnaire to Centre, asking why it should not be the right of a newborn child to be breastfed for at least six months after birth.
New Delhi: In a peculiar order, the Madras High Court asked the central government to consider passing a law to make breastfeeding mandatory. The court also asked why it should not be the right of a newborn child to be breastfed for at least six months after birth.
On 22 December, Justice N. Kirubakaran sent 15 questions to the central government on maternity benefits to women as well as breastfeeding. This is the second time in a month that the judge posed difficult questions to the government.
In the latest questionnaire, the judge has asked, among other things, why the Centre cannot follow Tamil Nadu’s example to enhance the maternity leave period for women government employees to nine months from six. In 2016, then chief minister J. Jayalalithaa had announced an increase in maternity leave, fulfilling her poll promise to women.
The judge asked the government to emulate child rights laws of the UAE that make breastfeeding mandatory. In his 36-page order, he extensively quoted studies and reports by the Global Breastfeeding Collective, an initiative by the World Health Organization and UNICEF, to stress the significance of breastfeeding.
The court was hearing a plea by a doctor who had claimed she was denied post-graduate admission since the state government wrongly calculated her service period.
Dr. Ishwarya, the petitioner, had said that her maternity leave was excluded in calculating her service period, prompting the judge to look into laws related to maternity benefits for women.
The judge later made the Union ministries of law, women and child welfare parties to the case along with several state government departments.
On 14 December, the judged had sent a set of 10 questions to the central government on reservation for “poor from the forward community”. Among other points, he asked the government if it was “possible to make reservation for the people belonging to forward community based on their economic status?”
“The poor, in the so-called forward communities, have been neglected so far and no one could speak about them fearing protest voices in the name of social justice,” the judge noted.
Justice Kirubakaran has been allocated cases of writ petitions including PILs as per the roster. The 58-year-old judge is one of the most senior judges of the Madurai Bench of the Madras High Court. He practised law for 24 years before being appointed an additional judge of the Madras High Court in 2009.