The Maternity Benefit Act, 1961

What it does

The Act regulated the employment of women in certain establishments for a period before and after childbirth and gave them maternity benefit, which is paid leave at the rate of the average daily wage. It also prohibited dismissal during maternity leave and required a medical bonus where the employer did not provide pre-natal and post-natal care. It is repealed and is described here for the periods it governed.

The Maternity Benefit (Amendment) Act, 2017 was the largest change in its life. It raised paid leave from twelve to twenty-six weeks for the first two children, kept twelve weeks for a third child, gave leave to a woman who adopts a child below a stated age or becomes a commissioning mother, allowed work from home where the nature of the work permitted it, and required an establishment with fifty or more employees to provide a crèche.

Who it binds

It applied to factories, mines, plantations and shops and establishments, and to other establishments that the Government extended it to, which had ten or more employees. A woman had to have worked for the employer for at least eighty days in the twelve months before her expected date of delivery to claim the benefit.

What moved out of it

The Code on Social Security, 2020 absorbed the subject and repealed the Act. The site's note on the labour codes records that the four labour codes were brought into force on 21 November 2025, so the repeal takes effect from that date, subject to the savings provision of the Code. The note also records that an establishment with fifty or more employees must provide a crèche under the codes, with an allowance of at least INR 500 a month for each child as an alternative.

What has changed, and when

The history is in two steps. The 2017 amendment from April 2017 lengthened the leave and added the crèche duty and the adoption benefits. The Code then replaced the whole Act in November 2025. The site has not compared the Code's text with the Act's section by section, so the section numbers, forms and procedure for a claim are to be taken from the Code and its rules and not from the Act.

What turns on it in practice

The employment practice names the Act among the statutes it works under. A claim for maternity benefit or a complaint of dismissal during maternity leave that arose before 21 November 2025 is read under the Act, and the case law on its sections applies. A claim that arose after it is read under the Code. For a pregnancy that straddles the date, the Code's savings provision decides which text governs the leave already granted.

Three points recur in practice. Whether the employee had completed the eighty days of service required for the benefit. Whether the employer gave the notice and the leave that the law required, and whether it continued to pay wages during the leave. And whether a dismissal or a change in terms during the leave or the period of pregnancy is protected, since the Act made a dismissal during maternity leave unlawful, and a termination that closely follows the return from leave will be examined for that reason.

The crèche duty is the part that growing employers meet unnoticed. It is counted on current headcount, and an establishment that has crossed fifty employees through hiring or acquisition may have crossed it without a decision to do so, as the note on the labour codes observes.