Casual Leave for Central Government Employees

Casual leave is a concession of 8 days in a calendar year that lets a central government employee be away from office without being treated as absent from duty, fixed at that figure with effect from 1 January 1998 by Department of Personnel and Training Office Memorandum No. 12/9/94-JCA dated 14 January 1998. It is not a recognised form of leave under the CCS (Leave) Rules 1972. No balance is debited, the pay is not intermitted, and the day counts as duty.

That single negative fact settles almost every question about casual leave. Because it is a concession administered by instruction rather than a head of leave created by rule, it carries a fixed annual quota instead of an earned balance, it lapses on 31 December, it cannot be encashed, it cannot be joined to earned leave, and the intervening Sunday is not charged against it. The formulation itself is old: Article 308 of the Civil Service Regulations states that casual leave is not a recognised form of leave, that the government servant on casual leave is not treated as absent from duty, and that the pay is not intermitted.

The instructions are correspondingly scattered. There is no rule number to cite for casual leave, because there is no rule: the entitlement, the five-day spell limit, the treatment of holidays, the half-day facility and the register all sit in a series of Office Memoranda running from Ministry of Home Affairs Office Memorandum No. 6/3/59-Estt(A) dated 23 December 1959 to the present, compiled by the Department of Personnel and Training in its brochure on casual leave and special casual leave.

This article sets out the concessional status and what follows from it, the 8-day entitlement and the 10 days for industrial and operational staff, who is covered, the rules on holidays and on combination with other leave, the five-day spell limit, half-day casual leave and the debit for late attendance, the position on tour and the daily allowance bar, the Leave Travel Concession and joining time, the special casual leave that sits above the ordinary quota, the register, the effect on pay and increment, the position during suspension, and how casual leave compares with earned leave. The framework of the recognised leaves is in the CCS (Leave) Rules article; casual leave sits alongside that framework rather than inside it.

Status as a concession outside the leave rules

Casual leave is a concession and not a recognised form of leave, and each limb of that formulation has a consequence. Article 308 of the Civil Service Regulations, restated at the head of the Department of Personnel and Training brochure, provides that casual leave is not a recognised form of leave, that the government servant on casual leave is not treated as absent from duty, and that the pay is not intermitted.

Because casual leave is not leave, it is not debited to any leave account. Earned leave and half pay leave are drawn from balances credited on 1 January and 1 July under Rules 27 and 29 of the CCS (Leave) Rules 1972; casual leave has no such account, so a day of casual leave reduces nothing except the year’s quota of 8 days recorded in an office register. Because the employee is not treated as absent, the day is not a break in duty. And because the pay is not intermitted, there is no leave salary to compute at all.

The concession is regulated by executive instruction rather than by statutory rule, which is why the authority for every proposition below is an Office Memorandum. The 66 rules of the CCS (Leave) Rules 1972 do not mention casual leave anywhere.

One correction is worth making at the outset, because it is the commonest misreading of the subject. Casual leave is not more refusable than earned leave. Rule 7 of the CCS (Leave) Rules 1972 states that leave cannot be claimed as of right, and that the sanctioning authority may refuse or revoke leave of any kind in the exigencies of the public service. The real difference is the leave account: earned leave accrues, accumulates to 300 days and is encashable, and casual leave does none of those things.

Entitlement of 8 days a calendar year

The entitlement is 8 days in a calendar year for a regular civilian central government employee, uniform across Groups A, B and C. It does not vary with seniority, pay level or length of service, unlike earned leave, which Rule 27 credits at 30 days a year in two instalments. The year runs 1 January to 31 December, and casual leave not used within it lapses.

The 8-day figure is the result of a reduction. Casual leave stood at 12 days a year under Ministry of Home Affairs Office Memorandum No. 6/3/59-Estt(A) dated 23 December 1959, with a maximum of 8 days at any one time. Department of Personnel and Training Office Memorandum No. 12/9/94-JCA dated 14 January 1998 cut the entitlement to 8 days and the single-spell maximum to 5 days, both with effect from 1 January 1998, following the 5th Central Pay Commission and the move to a five-day week. The figure has not changed since, and neither the 6th Central Pay Commission nor the 7th Central Pay Commission disturbed it.

A separate figure applies to staff who get fewer public holidays than administrative office staff. Department of Personnel and Administrative Reforms Office Memorandum No. 28016/1/77-Estt(A) dated 17 September 1977 gave such categories 15 days of casual leave a year. Office Memorandum No. 28016/3/98-Estt.(A) dated 15 June 1998 reduced operating and maintenance staff to 10 days with effect from 1 January 1998, and 10 days is the figure for industrial and operational staff today.

An employee who joins in the middle of the year does not automatically forfeit the balance of the quota. The 1959 Office Memorandum allows casual leave to be granted to a mid-year entrant either proportionately or in full, at the discretion of the authority competent to sanction it, so a person appointed in July is not confined to four days as a matter of rule.

Coverage: who draws casual leave

The casual leave instructions apply to government servants serving in the civil offices of the Government of India, which is the scope Ministry of Home Affairs Office Memorandum No. 6/3/59-Estt(A) dated 23 December 1959 set and the Department of Personnel and Training has maintained since. Within that scope the concession is general: it is available to permanent, temporary and officiating employees alike, from the date of appointment, because it does not depend on the leave account that several other benefits are built on.

Employees on probation draw casual leave on the same terms as confirmed employees, for the same reason. Probation regulates confirmation in the post, not the capacity to be granted a concession that is not debited anywhere.

Three groups sit outside these instructions and follow their own. Railway servants are governed by Railway Board instructions on casual leave, issued separately although closely modelled on the civil rules. Autonomous bodies, statutory corporations and public sector undertakings frame their own leave and casual leave provisions under their own regulations, and a rate adopted from the central pattern is adopted by decision of that body rather than by operation of the Department of Personnel and Training instructions. State government employees are governed by the leave rules of their own state, and several states retain 12 days or 15 days of casual leave, so a figure quoted from a state office does not apply to a central government post.

An employee of a vacation department, such as a teacher in a central school, draws reduced earned leave under Rule 28 of the CCS (Leave) Rules 1972 and no half pay leave under Rule 29, but those restrictions attach to the recognised leaves. Casual leave is a separate concession and is not earned against the vacation.

Combination with holidays and other leave

Casual leave cannot be combined with any regular leave, and the reason is structural rather than an exception written into a rule. Rule 11 of the CCS (Leave) Rules 1972 permits leave of any kind to be combined with leave of any other kind, subject to each head’s own spell limit. Casual leave is not leave under those rules, so Rule 11 never reaches it. Office Memorandum No. 46/8/67-Estt.(A) dated 22 July 1967 states the bar directly: casual leave cannot be combined with both special casual leave and regular leave. An employee who needs a longer continuous absence must take it as a recognised leave throughout rather than extending casual leave with earned leave.

Two companions are permitted. A restricted holiday may be prefixed or suffixed to casual leave under Ministry of Home Affairs Office Memorandum No. 20/37/60-Pub.I dated 7 October 1960, so an employee can take a restricted holiday and add casual leave on either side of it. Special casual leave may also be combined with casual leave, though not with casual leave and regular leave together.

Holidays that fall inside a spell are treated generously, and this is the rule that makes the 8 days stretch. Sundays, weekly offs and closed or gazetted holidays may be prefixed or suffixed to casual leave, and where they fall within a spell of casual leave they are not counted as casual leave, under the Office Memorandum of 23 December 1959 read with the Office Memorandum of 20 August 1960. An employee who takes casual leave on a Friday and the following Monday, with the Saturday and Sunday between, is charged two days against the quota of 8, not four. The absence runs four calendar days and the debit is two.

The five-day spell limit

Not more than 5 days of casual leave may be taken at any one time, relaxable in exceptional circumstances by the competent authority. The limit was 8 days at a time under the 1959 instruction and was cut to 5 days with effect from 1 January 1998 by Office Memorandum No. 12/9/94-JCA dated 14 January 1998, so a reader who finds the figure of 8 days in an older compilation is reading a superseded limit.

The limit bites on the debit, not on the calendar. Because intervening Sundays, weekly offs and closed holidays are not counted as casual leave, a spell that exhausts the full 5 days of the quota can produce an absence considerably longer than five calendar days when a weekend and a gazetted holiday fall inside it. An employee who takes casual leave from a Thursday to the following Wednesday over a weekend is charged five days if the Saturday, the Sunday and one closed holiday intervene.

The relaxation is a real power and not a formality, but it is exercised by the competent authority on the facts of the case, and an employee cannot assume it. Where more than five working days are needed, earned leave is the instrument the rules intend.

Half-day casual leave and late attendance

Half a day of casual leave is permissible, and the lunch interval is the dividing line, under Ministry of Home Affairs Office Memorandum No. 60/17/64-Estt.(A) dated 4 August 1965. An employee can take casual leave for the forenoon and work the afternoon, or the reverse, and half a day is debited against the quota of 8 days. The facility makes casual leave usable for the part-day absences that no recognised leave accommodates, since earned leave is not granted in half days.

The same half-day unit is the sanction for late attendance. Half a day of casual leave is debited for each day of late arrival under Ministry of Home Affairs Office Memorandum No. 60/45/65-Estt.(A) dated 4 February 1966, with a condonation power: late attendance of up to one hour, on not more than two occasions in a month and for justifiable reasons, may be condoned by the competent authority rather than charged. Early departure is treated in the same way as late arrival.

Department of Personnel and Training Office Memorandum No. 11013/9/2014-Estt.A-III dated 21 November 2014, which introduced the Aadhaar Enabled Biometric Attendance System across central government offices, is the order most often misread on this point. It changed nothing about the entitlement. The Office Memorandum states that the biometric system is an enabling platform only and that the instructions on office hours and late attendance are unchanged, so the half-day debit and the two-occasion condonation continue to operate exactly as the 1966 instruction set them. What the biometric record altered is the evidence, not the rule: a late arrival that was previously a matter of the attendance register is now timestamped.

An employee who has exhausted the quota of 8 days cannot have a half day debited against it, and the late attendance then falls to be dealt with as unauthorised absence or under the CCS (Conduct) Rules 1964, which is why the two-occasion condonation matters in the last quarter of the year.

Grant on tour and the daily allowance bar

Casual leave can be taken while on tour, under Ministry of Finance Office Memorandum No. 1(14)-E.IV(B)/66 dated 7 February 1967, subject to one financial consequence: daily allowance is not admissible for the period of the casual leave. Daily allowance under the travelling allowance rules is paid for a halt on duty at the tour station, and a day of casual leave taken at that station is not a halt on duty, so the allowance for that day is not drawn.

The bar is confined to the daily allowance for those days. The rest of the tour is unaffected, the journey fares already earned are not disturbed, and the employee’s pay for the casual leave day is drawn in full as usual, because casual leave does not intermit pay. Railway instructions apply the same principle with a refinement worth knowing, allowing half the daily allowance where the casual leave on tour is for half a day.

Leave Travel Concession and joining time

The Leave Travel Concession may be availed while on casual leave. Under the CCS (LTC) Rules 1988, the concession is admissible during regular leave, casual leave and special casual leave, so an employee can cover the days of an LTC journey with casual leave rather than spending earned leave on it; the consolidated Department of Personnel and Training guidelines on the Leave Travel Concession dated 30 April 2024 restate the position. This is one of the practical advantages of the concession, because the journey costs the employee nothing from the earned leave balance that is later encashable.

Joining time is the opposite case. Rule 6(2) of the CCS (Joining Time) Rules 1979 allows joining time to be combined with vacation or with regular leave of any kind or duration, but expressly excludes casual leave, so an employee on transfer cannot add casual leave to the joining time to widen the gap between the two postings. The employee who wants a longer break at transfer must take regular leave, which Rule 6(2) does permit.

Special casual leave and the grants for disability

Special casual leave is a separate concession granted over and above the ordinary 8 days, for a defined list of purposes, and it does not touch the casual leave quota. Like ordinary casual leave it is non-statutory and rests on Department of Personnel and Training instructions, and it is recorded separately. The purposes include sterilisation under the family welfare programme, blood donation, participation in recognised sport and cultural activity, recognised trade union and staff association work, and absence caused by a curfew, a bandh, a natural calamity or a transport failure beyond the employee’s control. Each purpose carries its own day limit fixed by the instruction for that purpose, and the special casual leave article sets out the limits one by one.

Two grants for employees with disabilities are the largest addition to the ordinary quota. An employee with a disability is granted 4 days of special casual leave in a calendar year for requirements relating to the disability, introduced on the recommendation of the 6th Central Pay Commission through Department of Personnel and Training Office Memorandum No. 25011/1/2008-Estt.(A) dated 19 November 2008. Because it sits above the ordinary 8 days, it gives such an employee the equivalent of 12 days in the year.

The second grant is activity specific. A further special casual leave of up to 10 days in a calendar year is granted for taking part in conferences, seminars, training and workshops connected with disability, under the Office Memorandum dated 14 November 2007. The Department of Personnel and Training compendium of instructions on reservation and facilities for persons with benchmark disabilities carries both grants, so they are part of the current framework.

The casual leave register and the annual lapse

Casual leave is recorded in an office register rather than a leave account, under Office Memorandum No. 46/3/61-Estt.(A) dated 17 July 1961. That instruction prescribes the form of the record: one page is used for the whole year for all the employees of one section, and each entry is attested promptly by the sanctioning officer by means of dated initials. Half days are recorded as half days, and the holidays that intervene in a spell are left out of the debit.

The register exists because the quota is annual and finite. An employee who has used all 8 days cannot draw more casual leave that year and must apply for a recognised leave for any further absence, and an employee with days left on 31 December simply loses them. There is no carry-forward to the next year and no encashment, and leave encashment on retirement is computed on the earned leave and half pay leave balances, never on casual leave.

Casual leave is applied for and sanctioned in the ordinary way through the office, and in departments running the electronic human resource management systems the application and the register have moved onto that platform. The substance is unchanged: an application, a sanction by the competent authority subject to the work of the office, and an entry against the year’s 8 days.

Effect on pay, increment and qualifying service

A day of casual leave counts as duty for every purpose that turns on service, because the employee is not treated as absent from duty. Full pay is drawn for the day, and dearness allowance, house rent allowance and transport allowance for the month are unaffected, since none of them is reduced for a day on which pay is not intermitted.

The consequence reaches the annual increment. Rule 10 of the CCS (Revised Pay) Rules 2016 requires six months of qualifying service as on the increment date of 1 January or 1 July, and days of casual leave count towards that six months as duty. The same holds for qualifying service for pension, which counts periods of duty and of leave that qualifies, and casual leave is not a break in it.

The contrast with the recognised leaves is sharp on the last point. Extraordinary leave under Rule 32 does not count as qualifying service unless specifically allowed, and a period of dies non is a break for increment purposes. Casual leave carries neither risk, which is why it is the natural instrument for a single day of absence.

Suspension, probation and unauthorised absence

Casual leave cannot be granted to a government servant under suspension. Fundamental Rule 55 provides that leave may not be granted to a government servant under suspension, and the reason is anterior to the rule: the suspended servant is not performing the duties of the post, so there is no duty for a concession to interrupt. Such a servant draws a subsistence allowance under Fundamental Rule 53 in place of pay. Where the suspension is subsequently held to be wholly or partly unjustified, the period is regulated under Fundamental Rule 54, which is a distinct exercise from the grant of leave.

Probation is the opposite case. An employee on probation draws casual leave on the same terms as a confirmed employee, from the date of appointment, because the concession does not depend on confirmation in the post or on any accrued balance.

Absence that is neither casual leave nor sanctioned regular leave is unauthorised. The competent authority may regularise it retrospectively as extraordinary leave under Rule 32(6) of the CCS (Leave) Rules 1972, or may treat the period as dies non, which counts neither as duty nor as leave and carries the increment and qualifying service consequences that follow. An employee who has exhausted the 8 days has therefore not simply run out of a convenience; the next unsanctioned day is a different category of absence altogether.

Comparison with earned leave and special casual leave

The table sets casual leave against the recognised leave most often confused with it and against the related concession, on the position as at 14 August 2026.

The trade is visible in the rows. Casual leave costs nothing from a balance, counts as duty and can be taken for half a day at short notice, and it is capped at 8 days, cannot be accumulated or encashed, cannot be joined to regular leave and cannot exceed five days at a stretch. Earned leave is the mirror image: it is a full head of leave that accumulates and is encashable, and it counts as absence and is drawn from an account. The two are used for different things, and the rules keep them apart deliberately. A compensatory off granted for attendance on a closed holiday is a third instrument again, earned by the extra attendance rather than granted from a quota.

Refusal in the exigencies of work

Casual leave is granted subject to the exigencies of the public service, so the sanctioning authority may refuse it or ask that it be deferred where the work of the office requires the employee’s presence. In practice it is granted routinely, because 8 days a year for personal reasons is a small convenience, but the discretion is genuine and an employee cannot insist on a particular day.

The refusability is not what distinguishes casual leave from the recognised leaves, and the point is worth stating plainly because the opposite is widely assumed. Rule 7 of the CCS (Leave) Rules 1972 provides that leave cannot be claimed as of right, and that leave of any kind may be refused or revoked by the sanctioning authority in the exigencies of the public service. Earned leave is refusable on the same footing.

What actually separates casual leave from earned leave is the account. Earned leave is credited, accumulates to 300 days, counts as absence when taken and is encashable in cash at retirement; casual leave is a fixed annual permission that is not credited, not accumulated, not absence and not convertible into money. Reading casual leave as a concession rather than as one more head of leave makes every rule about it follow, from the lapse on 31 December to the bar on combining it with earned leave.

Related Articles

• CCS (Leave) Rules 1972
• Earned leave
• Special casual leave
• Compensatory off
• Restricted and gazetted holidays
• Central government holidays
• Half pay leave
• Commuted leave
• Leave not due
• Extraordinary leave
• Child care leave
• Maternity leave for central government employees
• Paternity leave
• Child adoption leave
• Study leave
• Quarantine leave
• Hospital leave
• Special disability leave
• Work-related illness and injury leave
• Vacation department leave
• Sabbatical leave
• Joining time
• Leave Travel Concession
• Leave encashment
• Daily allowance on tour
• Suspension
• Subsistence allowance
• Probation in the central government
• Qualifying service
• Annual increment
• Dearness allowance
• House rent allowance
• Transport allowance
• CCS (Conduct) Rules 1964
• Department of Personnel and Training
• Central government employees in India
• 5th Central Pay Commission
• 7th Central Pay Commission
• Take-home salary for central government employees

External references

• Department of Personnel and Training, instructions on the grant of casual leave and special casual leave
• Department of Personnel and Training, CCS (Leave) Rules 1972
• Department of Personnel and Training, Central Civil Services rules and instructions
• Department of Personnel and Training
• Chief Commissioner for Persons with Disabilities

References

1. Ministry of Home Affairs Office Memorandum No. 6/3/59-Estt(A) dated 23 December 1959: foundational instructions on the grant of casual leave, 12 days a calendar year, 8 days at any one time, prefixing and suffixing of Sundays and closed holidays, and proportionate grant to mid-year entrants.
2. Ministry of Home Affairs Office Memorandum No. 6/3/59-Estt(A) dated 20 August 1960: public holidays and weekly offs falling within a spell of casual leave not to be counted as casual leave.
3. Ministry of Home Affairs Office Memorandum No. 20/37/60-Pub.I dated 7 October 1960: restricted holidays may be prefixed or suffixed to casual leave.
4. Office Memorandum No. 46/3/61-Estt.(A) dated 17 July 1961: maintenance of the casual leave register, one page a year for each section, entries attested by dated initials.
5. Ministry of Home Affairs Office Memorandum No. 60/17/64-Estt.(A) dated 4 August 1965: grant of half a day’s casual leave, the lunch interval being the dividing line.
6. Ministry of Home Affairs Office Memorandum No. 60/45/65-Estt.(A) dated 4 February 1966: debit of half a day’s casual leave for late attendance, with condonation of up to one hour on not more than two occasions in a month.
7. Ministry of Finance Office Memorandum No. 1(14)-E.IV(B)/66 dated 7 February 1967: casual leave may be taken while on tour.
8. Office Memorandum No. 46/8/67-Estt.(A) dated 22 July 1967: casual leave not to be combined with both special casual leave and regular leave.
9. Department of Personnel and Administrative Reforms Office Memorandum No. 28016/1/77-Estt(A) dated 17 September 1977: 15 days of casual leave for categories entitled to fewer public holidays.
10. Department of Personnel and Training Office Memorandum No. 12/9/94-JCA dated 14 January 1998: reduction of casual leave from 12 days to 8 days a calendar year and of the single spell from 8 days to 5 days, with effect from 1 January 1998.
11. Department of Personnel and Training Office Memorandum No. 28016/3/98-Estt.(A) dated 15 June 1998: 10 days of casual leave a calendar year for operating and maintenance staff with effect from 1 January 1998.
12. Rule 6(2) of the Central Civil Services (Joining Time) Rules, 1979: joining time may be combined with vacation or regular leave but not with casual leave.
13. Rules 7, 11, 27, 28, 29 and 32 of the Central Civil Services (Leave) Rules, 1972: leave not claimable as of right, combination of leave, earned leave, vacation department staff, half pay leave, and extraordinary leave.
14. Fundamental Rule 55: leave may not be granted to a government servant under suspension.
15. Department of Personnel and Training Office Memorandum No. 25011/1/2008-Estt.(A) dated 19 November 2008: 4 days of special casual leave a calendar year for employees with disabilities, and the Office Memorandum dated 14 November 2007 for up to 10 days for disability-related conferences, seminars and training.
16. Department of Personnel and Training Office Memorandum No. 11013/9/2014-Estt.A-III dated 21 November 2014: Aadhaar Enabled Biometric Attendance System, with no change to the instructions on office hours and late attendance.