Paternity Leave in India

Paternity Leave in India

Author Name : Manmohan

INTRODUCTION

The time which has been gone, when there was no responsibility of father to look after their new born baby due to joint families.In India our family is our first priority, therefore, it is the joint responsibility of the father and mother to take care of their child. They each must devote time for well-being of their new born baby. As we all know that our family is so much important for us and we need our loved ones to be on our side when we need them. Earlier, there was no any provision for Paternity leave. In 1961, the Government of India made provisions for women employees which is known as the Maternity BenefitsAct . Under this act female employees are given various benefits and incentives. There was only The Maternity Benefit Act, 1961 in which a female employee can avail leave and also get pay for that time period. But there was no any provision for paternity benefits. For the better care of the child, importance of father is not less than mother of the new born baby. As in our new India we think about everything from different aspect, so the concept of Paternity leave was introduced for care and protection of the child and his wife.Necessity of laying down of provision for paternity leave to maintain a healthy family environment was seen.  Because at that time, women is not able to handle household properly, so to reduce the burden of women, thisconcept was introduced. And also this concept was raised by the great cricketer ViratKohli, when his wife Anushka Sharma was pregnant. To encourage this, the maternity leave policy was permitted to mother and now paternity leave is also being permitted to father of new born baby in India. Thus in 1999,the Central Government of India made provision of paternity leave for employees of Central Government.In September 2017, pursuant to the enactment of Maternity Benefit (Amendment) Act,2017,the Paternity Benefit Bill,2018 was proposed in LokSabha by Sh.Rajeev Satav , Member of Parliament from Maharastra. In India, government employees are entitled to get 15 days of paternity leave.