Manasvi Mittal*
Introduction
When the Supreme Court struck down the Three-month age cap on maternity benefits for adoptive mothers in Hamsaanandini Nanduri v. Union of India, it did something the surrounding discussions have been slow to notice: it dismantled one exclusion in India’s parental-benefit architecture while quietly conceding the existence of another. The bench of Justice J.B Pardiwala and R. Mahadevan held that Section 60(4) of the Code on Social Security, 2020, which confined the twelve-week maternity benefit to women adopting children below 3 months of age, is violative of Article 14 and 21, disregarding the fact that the processes of “caregiving, integration, bonding and adjustments”, remain integral to parenthood regardless the child’s age at placement. In the same vein, the court “urged” the Union to recognise paternity leave as a social security benefit, challenging the traditional notion of mothers as the sole caregivers. Yet, these observations remained mere judicial commentary, not binding directions, and have since faded into the background of a widely discussed judgment.
The petitioner, an adoptive mother of two, was denied maternity benefits because her adoptive child was over 3 months of age at the time of placement. The court applied the settled Reasonable Classification test of Article 14, asking whether the age-cap bore a rational nexus to the provision’s objective of supporting integration into a new family. Finding both the groups of adoptive mothers similarly placed for that objective, it held the exclusion of one group arbitrary. Its Article 21 analysis went further, treating adoption itself as an exercise of reproductive and decisional autonomy, drawing from the case of X2 v. State (NCT of Delhi); the present case thus confirmed that “the right of reproductive autonomy is not confined to the biological act of giving birth”.
The Missing Application of the Same Test
What the judgment does not do is extend the same test to fathers. The Bench’s push for paternity leave was framed as a policy appeal rather than a constitutional finding binding on it, this is not an unfamiliar terrain, the Madras High Court had already located paternity entitlements within Article 21 inB. Saravanan v. Deputy Inspector General of Police, holding that, “it is high time for the policy makers to recognise right to paternity leave/parental leave to the biological/adoptive parents, as the basic human right of the respective pre- natal/post-natal child.”, the case viewed the matter not only as a matter of the labour law benefits, rather as the child’s right to be protected under Article 14, 15(3) and 21. Similarly, the Uttarakhand High Court in Dr Deepa Sharma v. State of Uttarakhand, extended the entitlement to contractual and temporary employees, holding that, “every male or a female employee has a fundamental right of reasonable duration of leave in accordance with Article 21 read with Article 42”. Nanduri engages neither line, missing a chance to fuse the child-centred and equality routes into one stronger claim. The precedent base remains thin: A 2025 review finds that engagement with paternity leave in India is still “limited, particularly in private sectors” where the policy is left to individual employers’ discretion. The existing case commentaries on Nanduri treat the paternity leave appeal briefly, without asking why the same classification test was not extended to the father-side exclusion within the same statutory scheme. The appeal was not incidental: it was the court’s own acknowledgement that its reasoning could not be contained within the maternity-benefit question before it, yet the bench, by merely ‘urging’ the Union, passed responsibility back to the legislature that has shown little urgency.
At the most fundamental level, this is just not about gender parity, but about a child’s continuing right to have care from both parents, which is still not secured by both labour and adoption laws. This blog argues that Nanduri’s unfinished reasoning reveals a deeper structural exclusion: the position of fathers, as to paternity leave as well as regulatory obstacles to adopting a daughter. Read together, the leave and the eligibility gap suggest that Nanduri’s equality logic calls into question far more of India’s adoption framework than the court addressed.
What The Ruling Actually Held
The Legislative Vacuum
Central government employees are entitled to 15 days of paid paternity leave under Central Civil Services (Leave) Rule 551 (A), 1972, commonly referenced as Rule 43-A, a service rule, not a labour law entitlement, and one that has no application whatsoever to the private sector. The SS Code, despite using gender-neutral language in places, contains no operative paternity leave provision; its drafting predates the equality reasoning Nanduri now supplies. The one legislative attempt to close this gap, the Paternity and Parental Benefit Bill, 2025, introduced by MP Supriya Sule as a private member’s bill proposing 8 weeks of paid paternity leave and 8 weeks of shared parental leave, was introduced in the Lok Sabha’s winter session but currently remains a pending private member bill, and will not progress without the government’s adoption.
A more lasting solution may lie in retiring the maternity/paternity distinction itself: Rather than introducing a separate paternity statute alongside the surviving provisions of the Maternity Benefit Act with the SS Code, Parliament could fold both into one care-neutral Family Benefits Act, or simply incorporate paternity entitlements directly into Chapter VI, where it currently refers only to maternity leave, ultimately helping, what Nanduri seeks to achieve.
Nanduri And Social Reproduction Theory
This vacuum is identified in recent scholarship on India’s new labour codes, which deploys Social Reproduction Theory (“SRT”) to show the limitations in the definitions of “worker” and “employee” in labour codes, which exclude unpaid care work from the scope of law, treating it as a private, gendered obligation, as opposed to a public concern. Sophy K.J., in her analysis of the SS Code, also finds Nanduri as a confirmation of this shortcoming. The court left Chapter VI structurally unequal, reinforcing what feminist scholars term a ‘motherhood penalty’ alongside a cost-free ‘fatherhood premium’. This strengthens the blog’s claim that the gaps in leave entitlements and adoption eligibility reflect the same underlying problem: fathers are still not recognised as caregivers by law, despite formal commitments to gender equality.
The Compounding Exclusion: Who May Adopt Whom
A more overlooked problem concerns the eligibility of single fathers to adopt a girl child. As per Regulation 5(2)(c) of the Adoption Regulations, 2022, read with Section 57(4) of the Juvenile Justice Act, 2015, a single male is prohibited from adopting a girl child; there is no such restriction on a female, and she can adopt a child of either gender. The Madras High Court faced the gendered architecture of Regulation 5 in K. Prithika Yashika v. Union of India, when a transgender petitioner contended her exclusion from adoption was arbitrary. The court, while literally interpreting, held that Regulation 5(b) and (c) mention only ‘male’ and ‘female’, and the provision of Section 57(3), which allows a single or divorced person to adopt, does not extend eligibility beyond binaries, upholding the exclusion without testing whether it was consistent with equality.
This holds importance, as even a strong paternity leave law would not close this gap; fathers would remain ineligible to adopt daughters. Both the leave and the eligibility gaps are issues of sequential nature; they arise from the same exclusionary framework, one that the case of Yashini shows, despite reaching to the court, can escape judicial scrutiny.
Looking At India Through a Comparative Global Lens
The comparison holds importance, as Nanduri pointed towards it without following through. South Africa’s Constitutional Court went further in Van Wyk, striking down unequal parental-leave provisions and creating an interim regime of four months and ten days, shareable between parents regardless of gender or route to parenthood, while giving Parliament 36 months to legislate. The UK permits parents to share up to 50 weeks of parental leave; Nordic systems go further, Sweden (480 days) and Finland (160 days) both treat shared parental leave as a default, rather than a gendered exception, broadly structuring leave around childcare needs, rather than fixed gender roles.
Conclusion
While Nanduri rightly moved motherhood beyond biology, its constitutional reasoning remains incomplete. By broadening one parent’s entitlements while leaving the others to the legislature’s discretion, and by leaving Regulation 5(2)(c) unchallenged, the judgment creates an imbalance that two direct reforms can fix. First, Parliament should replace the standalone Paternity and Parental Benefit Bill, 2025 with a unified Family Benefits Act that applies Nanduri’s Classification test- adoptive and biological fathers, like adoptive and biological mothers, belong to the same genus for the purpose of caregiving-support legislation- and, as the SRT scholarship shows, caregiving falls in the legal domain regardless of which parent performs it. Second, Parliament should read down or amend Regulation 5(2)(c), devising mechanisms to evaluate single fathers under the same standards and home study assessments as those of single mothers while she is adopting a son, without presuming unsuitability of the former. Ultimately, equal parenthood requires a consistent statutory framework and not isolated judicial solutions.
* The author is a fourth-year B.A. LL.B. (Hons.) student at the Institute of Law, Nirma University, Ahmedabad. The author may be contacted at mittalmanasvi21@gmail.com.
This blog reflects the personal views of the author and does not necessarily represent the views of The Policy Chronicle.