The decision on daily-wage municipal workers

Ram Bahadur Thakur shuts one route by which the qualifying condition in section 5(2) could be defeated — the manipulation of the calendar. This decision shuts a second and larger one: the argument that a woman engaged by the day, on casual or daily wages, is not the kind of worker the Act was made for at all.

Since the Act operates by employer liability, that argument is attractive to an employer and disastrous for exactly the workers most in need of the benefit. Women on daily wages at construction sites are the least secure workers in the establishment and the least likely to have a written contract of employment. If the Act reached only the regularly employed, its protection would stop precisely where it is needed most.

The case concerned female construction workers engaged as daily-wage municipal workers who claimed maternity leave. The employer's position rested on the nature of their engagement rather than on the length of their service.

The Court "upheld the right of female construction workers to be granted maternity leave by extending the scope of the Maternity Benefits Act, 1961 to daily wage workers as long as they fulfilled Section 5(2)."

Two halves, and both matter. The Act reaches daily-wage workers; and the ordinary qualifying condition in section 5(2) still has to be satisfied by them.

First, the form of the engagement is not the test. Section 5(2) asks whether the woman has actually worked in the establishment of the employer from whom she claims, for the qualifying number of days in the twelve months preceding the expected delivery. It asks about work done, not about the label on the engagement. A daily-wage worker who has put in the days has satisfied what the section actually requires.

Second, the purpose points the same way. The Act is a protective statute for women in employment at the time of childbirth. A construction of it that excluded the most precarious workers would defeat its purpose in the very cases it was written for.

Third, the protection is extended without dissolving the condition. The decision does not give daily-wage workers the benefit unconditionally; it brings them within the Act and then requires them, like everyone else, to meet section 5(2). Read with Ram Bahadur Thakur, the two decisions produce a coherent rule: the gateway is a real one, but neither the employer's calendar nor the form of the engagement may be used to close it.

Use it on any question about who is covered by the Maternity Benefit Act, and on any problem involving a casual, daily-rated or construction worker. State the Act's employer-liability structure, state section 5(2), give Ram Bahadur Thakur for the counting of the qualifying days, and give this decision for the reach of the Act to daily-wage workers — with the condition still to be met.

Cite it correctly, which here means citing it carefully. No usable citation is available for this decision, and no case name is settled for it in this course. Refer to it as a decision on daily-wage municipal workers and state its holding. Do not attach a name or a report reference to it from elsewhere — an invented citation costs more marks than an omitted one.

It does not decide the quantum payable to a daily-wage worker, nor how her average daily wage is computed under the Explanation to section 5(1), beyond the general rule that maternity benefit can never fall below the statutory minimum wage under the Minimum Wages Act 1948 — the rupee floor named in the Act as originally enacted is long out of date and is not the law in force. It does not touch section 6 or the changes made by the Maternity Benefit (Amendment) Act 2017, and it has nothing to say about the contributory scheme under the Employees' State Insurance Act.