The demand raised by the Indian Medical Association Junior Doctors Network (IMA JDN) J&K over the withholding of salaries and allowances of resident doctors who availed maternity leave is not merely an administrative issue. It is a question of fairness, dignity and the credibility of the healthcare system itself.
Resident doctors work under some of the most demanding conditions in government hospitals. Long shifts, emergency duties, night calls and enormous patient loads are part of their professional routine. When a woman doctor takes maternity leave, she is not seeking a favour from the system. She is exercising a legitimate entitlement.
The Jammu and Kashmir High Court has already addressed the matter in the case of Dr Sonakshi Gupta and others, setting aside the denial of pay and allowances during maternity leave. The Court’s observation that treating doctors as being “out of assignment” and withholding their financial benefits effectively penalised them for motherhood should leave little room for bureaucratic ambiguity.
Yet, if salaries continue to be withheld or delayed in some Government Medical Colleges despite the judicial directions, it raises a troubling question: why should a doctor have to repeatedly fight the system to receive what the law has already recognised as her right?
The issue becomes even more serious when viewed in the context of women in medicine. The government wants more women to enter and remain in the medical profession, but policies and practices that financially penalise doctors for taking maternity leave send precisely the opposite message.
A maternity leave policy is meaningful only when it is accompanied by financial security. A woman should not have to choose between motherhood and economic stability, particularly after years of education, training and service in public healthcare.
The Health and Medical Education Department must therefore move beyond individual representations and ensure a uniform policy across all Government Medical Colleges in Jammu and Kashmir. Pending salaries and allowances of eligible resident doctors should be released without further delay, and clear instructions should be issued so that the same dispute does not arise again.
This is also an opportunity for the department to examine whether there are institutional gaps in implementing maternity-related entitlements. If different medical colleges are interpreting the rules differently, the answer is not more correspondence and prolonged file movement. It is a clear, binding and uniform order.
The intervention sought from Health and Medical Education Minister Sakina Itoo should be used to bring the matter to a decisive conclusion.
Doctors should not have to seek judicial intervention to protect an entitlement as fundamental as maternity leave. And once the High Court has spoken, the responsibility of the administration is even clearer: implement the judgment, release the dues and ensure that no woman doctor is financially penalised for becoming a mother. A healthcare system that expects compassion from its doctors must also demonstrate compassion and fairness towards its own doctors.
