Patna, Feb. 2: Dads in Nitish Kumar’s Bihar will have to spend more time with moms during childbirth.

The government yesterday announced that it had decided in principle to grant 15 days’ paternity leave to its male employees and extend maternity leave from 90 days to 135 days.

“The move is primarily aimed at ensuring the success of family planning measures as well as contributing to the empowerment of women,” said an official of the health department.

The privilege comes with a condition. The employees will be granted leave only during the birth of the first two children.

This aspect of the decision, said sources, implies that the government does not want its employees to have more than two children.

“There is no provision for such leaves in the event of a couple getting a third child,” said deputy chief minister Sushil Kumar Modi.

Sources in the chief minister’s secretariat confirmed that a proposal for paternity and maternity leaves has been formulated. “It will be approved by the cabinet soon,” a source said.

The move, hope government officials, will “give a boost to the chief minister’s initiative to empower women”. “Men do not consider raising children their responsibility. They want the responsibility to remain with women. The paternity leave will make them realise that they are as much responsible for rearing a child as their better halves,” said JD(U) leader Shivanand Tiwary.

“The government will evolve a mechanism to find out if the male employees actually help their wives in raising children during the paternity leave,” said Modi.

The government had already reserved 50 per cent of the seats in local bodies for women. Nitish had also announced 50 per cent reservation for women in posts of schoolteachers.

“Women are an important component of society and they must have their rightful share at all levels of the system,” he said.

The deputy chief minister said the leave proposal is based on the Justice (retd) Sarwar Ali commission’s report submitted in 1999.

The Assembly had discussed the report during the tenure of the Rabri Devi government. “But it was not implemented for some reason,” he added.

Women’s activists are expectedly happy. “It’s a progressive measure that will go a long way in checking the population and also making men understand women and the responsibilities associated with womanhood,” said Manju Prakash, CPM leader and a former MLA.