Maternity Benefit (Amendment) Bill, 2017

Maternity Benefit Act was established in 1961 to benefit expecting mothers and later amendments were made in 2017 to provide more benefits to the expecting employee. The act was made to protect employment of the women employee during the time of maternity and provides her with ‘maternity benefit’ i.e. full paid absent from work – to let take care of her child and herself. The new amendments has increased the duration of paid maternity leave available for women employees from the existing Twelve weeks (12) to Twenty-Six weeks (26). Along with this, some more claws have been added like maternity leave for adoptive and commissioning mothers, work from home option, creche facility and employee awareness at the time of appointment.