Almost every maternity policy template says twenty-six weeks and stops. Twenty-six weeks is one line of Chapter VI of the Code on Social Security, 2020, and the chapter runs from section 59 to section 72. This is a twenty-one clause policy built from the whole of it, with notice you owe her on the day she joins and the abstract the Rules make you put on the wall.
Editable Word. Every placeholder is in [CAPITALS IN SQUARE BRACKETS] and names itself, so Find and Replace is safe.
Scope, the eighty-day qualification, how long the leave runs, what she is paid and when, the medical bonus, the ESI interface, miscarriage and tubectomy, proof, notice, lighter work, the six weeks you may not employ her, nursing breaks, the creche, working from home, dismissal protection, forfeiture, death, the notices you owe, how her data is held, her right to complain, and review. Each carries a line saying which section it comes from, so you can answer a question about any of it. It sits alongside the appointment letter rather than replacing anything in it.
Section 67(2) requires every establishment to intimate every benefit under Chapter VI to every woman, in writing and electronically, at the time of her initial appointment. Not when she tells you she is pregnant. On the day she joins. It is the duty most commonly missing, because it falls due when nothing is happening, and this is the letter, with a note on keeping proof that you sent both copies.
Rule 40(4) says the abstract section 71 makes you display shall be in Form-XIV. Form-XIV is drafted on the Maternity Benefit Act, 1961, which Chapter VI repealed on 21-Nov-2025. The words twenty-six do not appear in it. It says six weeks where section 62(2) says eight. It quotes a two hundred rupee floor the Code does not have. And it never mentions adoption, commissioning mothers, the creche or the intimation at appointment. The pack sets out the gap and gives you a supplement to display beside it.
Fifty employees, not fifty women, triggers the creche. Children under six, within one kilometre, ten square feet each, hours matching the employees' hours, in the charge of a woman with midwifery or attendant training, and four visits a day with the rest intervals counting inside them. The one kilometre is relaxed inside a notified industrial park. Proof is Form-X, and rule 35 accepts it from an Accredited Social Health Activist or a qualified Auxiliary Nurse and Midwife, not only a doctor.
Rule 53(1)(a)(iv) requires a Register of Women Employees in Form-XXII, with twenty-three particulars running from her date of appointment through every proof produced and every amount paid. Rule 40(1)(c)(ii) puts it on the Inspector-cum-Facilitator's list for every inspection. All twenty-three are set out, and they sit beside the other statutory registers you already keep. Clause 19 of the policy says how that register is held, because a list of every pregnancy, miscarriage and termination by name is personal data, and whether you keep it on paper or electronically decides whether the Digital Personal Data Protection Act reaches it at all.
Eight weeks before the date, eighteen after, nursing breaks for fifteen months, and a payment due in forty-eight hours. Attendo keeps attendance, leave and payroll together so the balance matches the policy.
Chapter VI of the Code on Social Security, 2020 runs from section 59 to section 72. Twenty-six weeks is a single limb of section 60(3). Read end to end, the chapter and the Rules made under it put roughly twenty separate duties on an employer, and several are not leave at all. If you are rewriting your leave policy after the codes came into force, maternity is the section where the gap between what the headline says and what the statute requires is widest.
The qualification goes first. Section 60(2) gives nobody maternity benefit until she has actually worked eighty days in the twelve months immediately preceding her expected date of delivery, and the Explanation puts those days in an establishment of the employer she is claiming from. Eighty days is about thirteen weeks of a six-day week, and a weekly off is not one of the days that count, so a recent joiner may not qualify at all however long she worked somewhere else. That is worth telling her when she gives notice rather than when she expects the money, and it is one of several things the four labour codes changed in wording without changing in substance, so an old policy can look current and still be missing it.
Then the scope. Chapter VI reaches every factory, mine and plantation at any size, and every shop or establishment with ten or more employees, or that employed ten on any day of the preceding twelve months. There is no wage ceiling, so it covers the general manager and the housekeeping staff on the same terms. Falling below ten this year does not take you back out of it, because the test looks backwards twelve months.
The size point catches manufacturers hardest. A factory is covered at any headcount, and the creche under section 67(1) turns on fifty employees rather than fifty women, so a workshop of forty-eight men and three women is over the line. Hospitals and IT services teams run into the other end of it: no wage ceiling means the senior engineer is entitled to exactly what the chapter says, and a policy that quietly caps her at a company figure is varying a condition of service to her disadvantage under section 68(1).
None of this is obscure. It is simply longer than the headline, and templates copy headlines. The same thing happened with counting a weekly off as leave, where the rule everybody quoted turned out to be the one the Code had settled. Here the tell is the abstract on the wall: the form the Rules prescribe never mentions twenty-six weeks, and almost nobody who displays it has read it.
How long she gets is not a discretion. It is a table, and the second row is the one most policies leave out. Every row below is a separate limb of the Code, and the file carries all seven.
| Her circumstances | How long | Before the expected date | Rate | Proof | Provision |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| First or second child | 26 weeks | Not more than 8 weeks | Average daily wage | Form-X | s.60(3) |
| Two or more surviving children | 12 weeks | Not more than 6 weeks | Average daily wage | Form-X | s.60(3), first proviso |
| Adoption below three months, or a commissioning mother | 12 weeks | From the date of handover | Average daily wage | Form-X | s.60(4) |
| Miscarriage or medical termination | 6 weeks | From that day | Average daily wage | Form-X | s.65(1) |
| Plus, in every case | 2 weeks tubectomy, 1 month illness | Nursing breaks to 15 months | ₹3,500 medical bonus | Form-X | ss.64, 65, 66 |
of actual work in the twelve months before her expected delivery, in an establishment of the employer she claims from, before she is entitled to maternity benefit at all. Service elsewhere does not count, so a recent joiner may not qualify.
Source: Code on Social Security, 2020, s.60(2) and its Explanationto pay the balance of the benefit once she produces proof of delivery. The amount for the period before the date is payable in advance. Neither is a payroll-run event, and a late payment is something she can complain about to the Inspector-cum-Facilitator.
Source: Code on Social Security, 2020, s.62(5), with s.72 on the complaintof twenty-six weeks in Form-XIV, which is the abstract rule 40(4) makes you display under section 71. It is drafted on the Act the Code replaced, so the notice an employer is required to put on the wall says less than the law gives.
Source: Social Security (Central) Rules, 2026, G.S.R. 344(E), rule 40(4) and Form-XIVSection 62(6) says in terms that failure to give notice does not disentitle a woman to maternity benefit or to any other amount under the chapter. A clause making the benefit conditional on notice is void against it, and that clause is in a great many policies. Notice matters for planning, and the Rules prescribe Form-XI for it, but it is not a gate.
Section 61 and section 41(7)(b) say opposite things about who pays, and quoting either one alone gets it wrong. Section 61 keeps her on your Chapter VI benefit notwithstanding Chapter IV applying, until she qualifies. Section 41(7)(b) then says a woman eligible under Chapter IV may not claim from her employer under Chapter VI. The switch is contributions payable for seventy days in the immediately preceding two consecutive contribution periods, so it turns on her ESIC contribution record and not on whether she is registered.
Rule 35 accepts Form-X from a registered medical practitioner, an Accredited Social Health Activist or a qualified Auxiliary Nurse and Midwife, and it accepts proof of confinement from the municipality, the gram panchayat, a birth register, the Gram Pradhan or the Village Administrative Officer. The Activist limb exists so the proof is obtainable, and a policy that insists on a specialist is asking for more than the Rules do.
Section 67(1) says fifty employees. A workshop of forty-eight men and three women is over the line, and so is a back office where only a handful of the staff are women. Rule 37 then sets the detail: children under six, within one kilometre, ten square feet each, and hours matching the employees' hours. The one kilometre is relaxed by the competent authority inside a notified industrial park, which is worth asking about rather than assuming either way.
It is wider. It is unlawful to discharge or dismiss her during or on account of the absence, to time a notice of discharge to expire inside it, and to vary any condition of her service to her disadvantage. The third limb is the one people forget, and a quiet reassignment runs into it. Only rule 38's closed list of five grounds can withdraw the benefit, and then only by an order in writing, so the usual termination letter reasoning does not carry across.
Rule 40(4) says the abstract required by section 71 shall be in Form-XIV, so displaying it is right. But Form-XIV is drafted on the Act the Code replaced. It never says twenty-six weeks, it says six weeks where section 62(2) says eight, and it is silent on adoption, commissioning mothers, the creche and the intimation at appointment. Display it, and display something beside it that tells them the rest.
Twenty-six weeks, and little else
Twenty-one clauses, five annexures, editable Word
Writing twenty-six weeks down takes a minute. Paying it on the right day for a year, and keeping what Form-XXII asks for, is the long part. Attendo keeps attendance, leave and the payroll register in one place.
Attendo (formerly Petpooja Payroll) is payroll and attendance software used by 40,000+ businesses across manufacturing, hospitals, retail, IT services and hospitality. This template is one of the free HR downloads we publish, each built from the statute rather than from other templates.
Twenty-one clauses, five annexures and a decision table, in editable Word. Free, and no card.
