SC to examine maternity leave cap order for adoptive mothers

Section 60(4) of the Social Security Code allows 12 weeks of maternity leave only if an adoptive mother adopts a child below three months of age.

Over 11 months after reserving its verdict, the Supreme Court has now agreed to examine the validity of a contentious provision in the Code on Social Security, 2020, which limits maternity leave for adoptive mothers to only those who adopt children under the age of three months.

There is no provision at all for maternity leave if the adopted child is older than three months, including orphaned, abandoned or surrendered children. (Photo for representation)(PTI)

A bench of justices JB Pardiwala and KV Viswanathan has allowed Karnataka-based lawyer Hamsaanandini Nanduri to amend her pending petition to challenge Section 60(4) of the Social Security Code, which came into force last month and reproduces an earlier provision from the Maternity Benefit Act, 1961. The court noted that while it had reserved judgment in Nanduri’s petition on January 29, 2025, the Centre went ahead and notified the 2020 Code on November 21, 2025, repealing the 1961 Act but retaining the very provision under challenge.

“Since Section 5(4) of the Maternity Benefit Act is pari materia to Section 60(4) of the 2020 Code, we permit the petitioner to amend the petition,” said the bench in a recent order, adding that the judgment would be listed for pronouncement once the amended plea is placed on record.

Section 60(4) of the Social Security Code allows 12 weeks of maternity leave only if an adoptive mother adopts a child below three months of age. There is no provision at all for maternity leave if the adopted child is older than three months, including orphaned, abandoned or surrendered children. The restriction, Nanduri in her 2021 petition had argued, is arbitrary, discriminatory and unconstitutional, violating Articles 14 (equality), 19(1)(g) (right to profession) and 21 (right to life and dignity). Nanduri, who became an adoptive mother in 2017, described the provision as offering only “lip service” to adoptive parents.

Through the Central Adoption Resource Authority, she adopted two siblings — a four-and-a-half-year-old girl and her two-year-old brother, after authorities insisted the children not be separated. When she sought maternity leave from her employer, she was informed she was entitled to only six weeks’ leave per child, as neither child met the three-month age threshold. The law, her petition said, discriminates between biological and adoptive mothers, among adoptive mothers themselves, and even among adopted children.