Government slashes holidays for central staff

Government employees will have fewer holidays in 2010.

Although the government has yet to act upon the Second Administrative Reforms Commission's recommendations to reduce staff holidays, it has decided that central government employees outside Delhi will have just 6 holidays in 2010.

This is so because 8 other holidays in the list published by the Department of Personnel fall on Saturdays or Sundays, which in any case are off days.

Employees can also avail of 3 restricted holidays that would be decided by the coordination committees in State capitals from a list of 12 such holidays.

Central staff, outside Delhi, will just have a total of nine holidays.

Those, in Delhi, however will have 11 holidays in total: 9 holidays plus two restricted holidays as they are entitled to a total of 17 holidays, eight of which are on Saturdays or Sundays, and two restricted holidays of their choice from a list of 34.

Republic Day, Independence Day and Mahatma Gandhi's birth anniversary are three national holidays, but the last two occur on Sunday and Saturday.

Here is the list of holidays for employees outside Delhi:

• Republic Day --- January 26
• Good Friday --- April 2
• Buddha Purnima --- May 27
• Diwali --- November 5
• Id-ul-Zuha (Bakr Id) --- November 17
• Muharram --- December 17

The other holidays that fall on weekends are:

• Id-e-Milad-un-Nabi
• Mahavir Jayanti
• Independence Day
• Id-ul-Fitr
• Gandhi Jayanti
• Dussehra (Vijaya Dashmi)
• Guru Nanak Jayanti, and
• Christmas.

The government notification stipulates that 'no substitute holidays should be allowed if any of the festival holidays initially declared subsequently happens to fall on a weekly off or any other working day or in the event of more than one festivals falling on the same day.'

Three other holidays are to be decided by the employees' coordination committees in State capitals from a list of 12 as under:

• Makar Sankranti/Pongal --- January 14
• Basant Panchami --- January 20
• Holi --- March 1
• Baisakhi, Vishu, Bhag Binu, Cheti Chand, Gudi Padwa and first Navratra --- March 16
• Ram Navmi --- March 24
• Rath Yatra --- July 13
• Onam --- August 23
• Janamashthami --- September 2
• Ganesh/Vinayak Chaturthi --- September 11
• Maha Ashtami --- October 15.

Strangely, Shivaji Jayanti that falls on February 19 and Parsi New Year on August 19 are in the list of restricted holidays for Delhi, but not in Maharashtra which is where they are mostly celebrated.

Only two holidays -- Diwali (November 5) and Muharram (December 16) -- fall on Fridays which enable employees to get three days off as the next two days are the off-days.

The notification says that public sector undertakings and other government organisations would observe up to 16 holidays in 2010, including 3 national holidays: Republic Day, Independence Day and Gandhi Jayanti.

The rest of the holidays will be decided by the organisations themselves. The same applies to the Union Territories.

In case of banks, the notification says the number of holidays have been restricted to 15.