Rajya Sabha MP Priyanka Chaturvedi wrote a letter to Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman urging her to recall the State Bank of India's revised guidelines for recruitment and promotion which stated that candidates who are pregnant three months and above will be considered "temporarily unfit" and will be allowed to join within four months after delivery of the child.

Chaturvedi stated in the letter that such regressive and sexist guidelines will exacerbate the exclusion of women and inequality faced by them. "I am writing this letter to raise a matter of concern that has been brought to my notice. Recently, the State Bank of India released its revised guidelines for recruitment and promotion. As per the revised guidelines, candidates who are pregnant three months and above will be considered temporarily unfit and will be allowed to join within four months after the delivery of the child. This guideline is extremely discriminatory in nature and debilitates the progress made to empower the women of our country," Chaturvedi said in the letter.