Dear All
I do not see any difference in cubbing the type of leaves. What is more important is the misutilisation of leave. If the philosophy of leave is to provide benefit of pay while not physically present on the job then there comes no question of paid leave or earned leave or privileged leave or sick leave or casual leave etc.
Leave before being named is leave it self which recognizes with the fact that the individual is not physically present at his / her place of posting but getting pay for that day.
In no legislation it is defined that you cannot club types of leave. It is only our understanding to the leave policy made and implemented in an organisation / establishment / industry. If a person has exhausted his predecided entitlement of Sick Leave and unfortunately falls sick then if leave balance of Earned leave or Casual leave is available and we do not allow paid leave to individual. In this case i do not see any fun of making entitlement for one leave and denying the same in any other case at the time of its requirement.
Suppose in above type of case , casual leave get lapsed at the end of the year and individual was forced for LAP for his sickness, the whole purpose of the leave get defeated. We should not defeat the purpose.
Flexibility is required but with complete awareness on consequences of misutilisation. We should make our people so competitive so that they should understand the objective of the rules / legislation. If we are taking that course seriously then no authority would like to challenge the case based on case to case basis.
So finally in my opinion we should take care of legislation with clarity in mind for its objectives.
Anil Anand