Editorial 1: When a state celebrates police killing in cold blood, it thumbs its nose at the court and corrodes justice
Context:
- Coming up next on the watch of the six-year-old Yogi Adityanath government in UP: Encounter No 184. Asad Ahmed, son of gangster-politician Atiq Ahmed, and an aide, were killed in Encounter No 183 in Jhansi on Thursday, which was also the third encounter in the Umesh Pal murder case, and third in the first 13 days of April.
Police encounter killings in India
- As per the National Human Rights Commission’s (NHRC) annual report for 2018-19, there were 164 deaths due to police encounters that year. In the five years from 2013-14 to 2018-19, the number of yearly encounter deaths were 137, 188, 179, 169 and 164 respectively.
- As per the report, the highest number of police encounter deaths were reported in Uttar Pradesh (23), followed by Assam (23), Maharashtra (11), Meghalaya (7), and Manipur (5). While 158 cases were registered over alleged police encounter deaths, only 98 were deemed as encounters after the NHRC’s investigations.
- Moreover, the NHRC has recommended disciplinary action against police personnel in only 25 cases of human rights violation (including encounter deaths) and no prosecutions of any personnel.
- Similarly, in 2020, only three cases were registered against police personnel for encounter killings, according to the annual National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) report.
Causes of increasing Extra-Judicial Killings
- The National Human Rights Commission and the state human rights commissions have been redundant for many years.
- Many leaders project encounter numbers as their achievement in maintaining law and order.
- It emerges out of a lack of faith in the judiciary because many believe that the courts will not provide timely justice.
- The police become heroes in the society as many people see them doing the job of cleaning up the Indian society by killing the criminals.
‘Stain on its record’
- The lengthening list of the UP Police’s encounter killings is a stain on its record. It gives the lie to the most fundamental of promises in a constitutional democracy — the assurance of due process, for all, in a system governed by the law. And, by the same token, a promise of protection, for all, against vigilante justice, even that which is perpetrated by the police.
Conclusion
- When the police take the law in its own hands, the danger is real and far-reaching, and it can come back to bite the political hand that feeds it. This is not a strike against terrorists in the fog of war, on the nation’s borders. This is the killing of those with documented cases, trials in progress. Along with the other state instrument, the bulldozer, this perilous institutionalization of impunity in the heart — and heartland — of the nation corrodes the constitutional letter and spirit.
Editorial 2: Maternity benefits to adoptive mothers: What the law says, why it is facing a challenge in SC
Context:
- The Supreme Court Wednesday agreed to hear a petition challenging the constitutional validity of Section 5(4) of the Maternity Benefit Act, 1961, which states that a woman who legally adopts a child below three months old will be entitled to 12 weeks of maternity leave.
About this particular provision
- The original 1961 legislation did not have specific provisions for mothers who adopt, and these were inserted with the 2017 amendment to the Maternity Benefit Act.
- According to Section 5(4) of the amended Act, “A woman who legally adopts a child below the age of three months or a commissioning mother shall be entitled to maternity benefit for a period of twelve weeks from the date the child is handed over to the adopting mother or the commissioning mother, as the case may be.”
- The term “commissioning mother” refers to a surrogate mother and has been defined as “a biological mother who uses her egg to create an embryo implanted in any other woman.” A woman adopting a child older than three months gets no benefits.
Discriminatory and Arbitrary
- The PIL challenges this provision on grounds of being “discriminatory” and “arbitrary” towards adoptive mothers.
- “Section 5(4) apart from being discriminatory and arbitrary towards the adoptive mothers, also arbitrarily discriminates against orphaned, abandoned or surrendered children above the age of three months, which is completely incompatible to the object of the Maternity Benefit Act as well as the Juvenile Justice Act,” the plea contends.
- Dubbing the purported benefit of 12 weeks’ maternity leave as “mere lip service”, the petition also states that when compared to the 26 weeks’ benefit for biological mothers, the provision fails to stand the basic scrutiny of Part III of the Constitution, which is linked to the concept of non-arbitrariness.
Maternity Benefit Act 1961
- The Maternity Benefit Act was originally passed by Parliament on December 12, 1961, to regulate the employment of women in “certain establishments” for the period before and after childbirth and “to provide for maternity benefit and certain other benefits.”
- Originally it applied to every establishment “being a factory, mine or plantation” and later in 1973, it was extended to “any such establishment belonging to Government” and “every establishment where persons are employed for the exhibition of equestrian, acrobatic and other performances.” It repealed the Mines Maternity Benefit Act, 1941 and Maternity Benefit Act, 1929.
- Section 4 of the 1961 Act prohibited the employment of or work by women during a certain period and under sub-section (1) stated, “No employer shall knowingly employ a woman in any establishment during the six weeks immediately following the day of her delivery or her miscarriage.”
- The right to paid maternity leaves was also given under Section 5 of the 1961 Act, although the period of such leave could not exceed twelve weeks, “that is to say, six weeks up to and including the day of her delivery and six weeks immediately following that day.”
What did the amendment in 2017 do?
- The Maternity Benefit (Amendment) Act, 2017 amended Section 5 of the erstwhile Act to allow 26 weeks of paid leave after childbirth, although only to biological mothers.
- The amendment also inserted Section 5(4) which said that adoptive or surrogate mothers legally adopting a child below three months will be entitled to a maternity benefit period of 12 weeks from the date the child is handed over to the mother.
- Under the amended Act, Section 11 was also inserted to say that, “Every establishment having fifty or more employees shall have the facility of creche within such distance as may be prescribed, either separately or along with common facilities.” It is also mandated that the employer allows four visits a day to the creche by the woman as well as rest intervals for her.
- However, a much-received criticism of this Act is that it does not apply to the unorganised sector.