Rajasthan High Court orders full 180 days' maternity leave for teacher denied it

The Rajasthan High Court has directed the state government to give a government primary school teacher the full 180 days of paid maternity leave, with full salary and all service benefits, after she was granted only 34 days and was pushed into using child care leave instead. Justice Anoop Kumar Dhand, in an order dated 8 October 2026 and reported on 15 and 16 October, described maternity leave as a right that fosters the bond between mother and child, and held that the leave period must not be treated as a break in her service. The teacher, Pooja Yadav, had sought the leave from 1 September 2023.

For many working mothers, the fight over maternity leave is not about the law on paper but about how an office applies it. Government employees in Rajasthan are entitled to 180 days, yet this teacher was given 34, apparently because her leave overlapped with a transfer to a new school. When the department refused to correct the record, she had to spend her child care leave, a separate allowance, to cover time that should have been maternity leave.

The order fixes that for her and says something wider about how such cases should be handled. By treating maternity leave as tied to the mother-child bond and to the right to life under Article 21, rather than as a routine leave entry, the court makes it harder for an administrative hiccup, such as a transfer, to cut it short. Its statement that the period is not a break in service also matters, because breaks can affect seniority, increments and pension calculations years later.

This is not the first time the same judge has pushed on the issue. In September 2024, in a case involving a woman employee of the Rajasthan State Road Transport Corporation, Justice Dhand held that limiting her maternity leave to 90 days, when other government employees got 180, was discriminatory, and recommended that the corporation change its rules. The new order applies that thinking to a single teacher who was given far less than the full period.

For women outside government, the ruling is a reminder to check what their own employer's rules say and to keep written records of leave applications. Court orders like this one are often cited later by employees in similar disputes.

Short-term: The teacher will have her leave record corrected, and receive her full salary for the period as maternity leave, subject to the state carrying out the order.

Long-term: The ruling gives other women government employees in Rajasthan a clear precedent if their maternity leave is cut short by a transfer or paperwork, and it adds to a line of court decisions treating maternity benefits as a matter of rights rather than discretion.

Who is affected: Women government employees in Rajasthan, especially teachers who are transferred around the time of childbirth; leave-sanctioning officers in education departments; and families who rely on a mother's full paid leave in a baby's first months.

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