PRAYAGRAJ, July 24 -- The Allahabad high court has held that for getting the benefits of maternity leave in service, there need not be any fixed gap between the two pregnancies. The court said that maternity benefit shall be governed by the provisions of the Social Security Code, 2020, which does not put any embargo, by way of timeline, between two pregnancies. With this observation, Justice Siddharth Nandan set aside the order dated January 9, 2026 issued by medical education department by which the claim of the petitioner nurse, Shikha Yadav, was rejected on the ground that the maternity benefit leave can be granted only when there is a gap of two years between two pregnancies. The court accordingly directed the petitioner to move a fresh application for the maternity leave available to her under the code. The court directed that after the application is filed, the authority concerned shall take an appropriate decision in view of the observations made by the court in its judgment. Shikha Yadav was working as a staff nurse/nursing officer under the department of medical education, Uttar Pradesh. She was earlier granted 180 days' maternity leave from January 29, 2024 to July 27, 2024. Thereafter, she became pregnant with her second child in 2025, whose expected delivery date was January 12, 2026. Accordingly, she submitted an application dated January 5, 2026 seeking the grant of maternity leave from January 19, 2026 to July 17, 2026 i.e. 180 days. The said application was rejected by the impugned (under challenge) order dated January 9, 2026 issued by a medical education department authority solely on the ground that two years had not elapsed since the grant of the earlier spell of maternity leave. In the rejection order, the authority relied upon the government order dated December 8, 2008 and Rule 153(1) of the UP Financial Handbook applicable to the department of medical education. In the judgment dated July 15, the court observed, "Accordingly, it is held that the provisions of The Code, 2020 shall prevail over any executive instructions, including Rule 153(1) of the Financial Handbook, Volume II, Part 2 to 4, which has also been read down by a Coordinate Bench of this Court in the case of Smt. Anupam Yadav in relation to the grant of maternity benefits for the second pregnancy. The said benefits, therefore, shall be governed by the provisions of the Code, 2020, which does not put any embargo, by way of a timeline, between two pregnancies."...