NH Impact: SBI withdraws discriminatory order against hiring pregnant women

Two days after National Herald¸ which first published a report highlighting State Bank of India’s revised guidelines for hiring pregnant women, the country’s largest bank has withdrawn the controversial circular that barred women candidates who are pregnant above three months from being hired at the bank.

In view of the public sentiments, SBI has decided to keep the revised instructions regarding recruitment of pregnant women candidates in abeyance and continue with the existing instructions in the matter, the bank said in a statement. However, its employees union is not satisfied with the response as the earlier norms too discriminate against pregnant women.

In an e-circular issued on December 31, 2021, the SBI had informed its local offices across the country of its revised medical standards. According to these norms, a woman who is pregnant for more than three months would be considered "temporarily unfit" and would be allowed to rejoin work only four months after delivering a child.

The pregnancy-related amendment was a stark change from the bank’s earlier guideline which stated that women candidates could be appointed in the bank up to six months of pregnancy, provided the candidate furnished a certificate from specialist gynecologist that her taking up bank’s employment at that stage was in no way likely to interfere with her pregnancy or the normal development of the foetus, or was not likely to cause her miscarriage or otherwise to adversely affect her health.

The SBI Employee Union stated that the new rules were an attempt to deny women their right to maternity benefits under the Code of Social Security, 2020. This entitles a woman to payment of average daily wage for up to 26 weeks of maternity leave, nursing breaks, permission to visit a creche four times a day as well as renders unlawful any attempt by the employer to discharge a pregnant employee.

Following several representations from different employee unions, as well letters from the Delhi Commission for Women to SBI Chairman Dinesh Kumar Kara, and Shiv Sena MP Priyanka Chaturvedi to Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman and outrage over social media, the bank issued a statement suspending these instructions.

Chaturvedi in her letter to the Union Finance Minister demanded that such detrimental policies not be implemented. In her letter to the SBI chairman, Delhi Commission for Women chairperson Swati Maliwal called the circular “llegal” for violating the Code of Social Security, 2020.

The guidelines to recruit pregnant women were issued in October 2009, when the country’s largest national bank had withdrawn a 30-year-old discriminatory norm. In the instructions (Letter No. CDO/IR/SPL/289 dated 16.09.2009), the bank had stated that pregnancy should no longer be treated as a disability for immediate appointment or promotion.