Quarantine Leave for Central Government Employees

Quarantine leave is leave granted when an employee is precluded, under an order of the competent medical authority, from attending office because an infectious disease is present in the family or household, sanctioned on the certificate of a medical or public health officer for ordinarily 21 days and up to 30 days in exceptional circumstances, on pay that is not interrupted. It is not a head of leave for central government civilian employees: the CCS (Leave) Rules 1972 do not provide it, the All India Services (Leave) Rules 1955 do not provide it, and Rule 555 of the Indian Railway Establishment Code, Volume I, which once did, reads Deleted.

The head has not disappeared from Indian public service. Statute 25 of the First Statutes of the Indian Institute of Technology Goa, 2017, notified as G.S.R. 978(E) on 31 July 2017, sets out quarantine leave in full, with the 21 day maximum, the 30 day extension and the list of six diseases. Regulation 68 of the Life Insurance Corporation of India (Staff) Regulations, 1960 carries the same rule in the language of the older leave code. A staff member of IIT Goa or an employee of the Life Insurance Corporation has a quarantine leave entitlement today; a Section Officer in a ministry does not.

The distinction that defines the head is the one readers most often miss. Quarantine leave answers infection in the household, not the employee’s own illness. A clerk whose child has cholera, and who is told by a health officer to stay away from the office so as not to carry the infection to colleagues, is the case the rule was written for. A clerk who has cholera is on sick leave, taken as half pay leave or commuted leave on a medical certificate under Rule 19 of the CCS (Leave) Rules 1972.

What quarantine leave is

Quarantine leave is a protective measure ordered in the interest of the workplace, not a benefit claimed for the employee’s own sickness. Statute 25(1) of the First Statutes of the Indian Institute of Technology Goa, 2017 grants it when a member of staff “is precluded under orders of the competent medical authority from attending office in consequence of an infectious disease in his family or household”. The employee is well; the household is not; the office is protected by keeping the two apart.

Two documents control the grant. The first is the order of the competent medical authority that the employee must stay away. The second is the certificate of a medical officer or public health officer, which Statute 25(1) makes the only basis on which the leave can be granted. Regulation 68 of the Life Insurance Corporation of India (Staff) Regulations, 1960 uses the same formula and adds a Note extending the expression “Medical or Public Health Officer” to the medical officer in charge.

The character of the leave follows from its purpose. An employee on quarantine leave is not treated as absent from duty and the pay is not interrupted, so the period sits outside the leave account within the admissible maximum. That is the feature no ordinary sickness leave has: half pay leave is debited and paid at half rate, while quarantine leave is neither.

Why the CCS (Leave) Rules 1972 do not provide it

The CCS (Leave) Rules 1972, published as Part III of the Fundamental Rules and Supplementary Rules, carry no quarantine leave head anywhere in their 66 rules. The kinds of leave they provide are earned leave under Rules 26 to 28, half pay leave under Rule 29, commuted leave under Rule 30, leave not due under Rule 31, extraordinary leave under Rule 32, maternity leave under Rule 43, paternity leave under Rule 43-A, leave to a female government servant on adoption of a child under Rule 43-B, work-related illness and injury leave under Rule 44, seamen’s sick leave under Rule 47, departmental leave under Rule 49 and study leave under Rules 50 to 63.

Rule 46, which carried hospital leave, was omitted by the Central Civil Services (Leave) (Fourth Amendment) Rules, 2018, notified as G.S.R. 1209(E) on 11 December 2018 and effective from publication in the Gazette on 14 December 2018, the same amendment that substituted work-related illness and injury leave into Rule 44. That is the shape of the 1972 Rules today: duty-caused illness has a head, household infection does not.

Casual leave sits outside the Rules altogether, as an executive concession, and so does special casual leave. Neither is a kind of leave under the 1972 Rules, which is why departments can and do issue instructions about them without amending the Rules, and why the COVID-19 orders of 2020 took the form they did.

The compilation of the Fundamental Rules and Supplementary Rules, Part I, running from FR 1 to FR 127, contains no quarantine leave rule either. Quarantine leave is therefore commonly described as a Fundamental Rules category, and that description does not survive a check of the text. A salary-calculator.in reading of both parts of the compilation, made on 11 September 2026, found the head in neither. What the service codes reproduce is the formula of the older leave code, retained by instruments framed at different dates and carried forward unchanged by each of them.

The rule text that survives, and where it is printed

Four instruments show the same rule in four places, and reading them together is the fastest way to see what quarantine leave is and who has it. The table is a salary-calculator.in construction, built by reading each instrument’s own leave chapter.

The IIT text is the cleanest modern statement of the rule. Statute 25 was notified in the Gazette of India, Extraordinary, Part II Section 3(i), in a series of statutes framed by the Council under Section 26 read with Section 27 of the Institutes of Technology Act, 1961 with the prior approval of the Visitor: G.S.R. 968(E) for IIT Hyderabad, G.S.R. 978(E) for IIT Goa, G.S.R. 980(E) for IIT Bhilai and G.S.R. 981(E) for IIT Jammu, all dated 31 July 2017. Statute 13 lists the kinds of leave admissible to a member of staff and places quarantine leave at clause (l), between hospital leave at clause (k) and leave-not-due at clause (m).

The Life Insurance Corporation text is older and phrased in the idiom of the leave code it was drawn from. Regulation 68 defines quarantine leave as absence from duty necessitated by orders not to attend office in consequence of the presence of infectious diseases in the household of the Corporation employee, grants it on the certificate of a medical or public health officer for a period not exceeding 21 days or 30 days in exceptional circumstances, treats any excess as ordinary leave, and states that the employee on quarantine leave is not treated as absent from duty. Regulation 60 lists it as the seventh kind of leave the Corporation grants.

The infectious diseases covered, and the chicken pox exception

Six diseases are named. Statute 25(3) of the IIT First Statutes 2017 provides that cholera, smallpox, plague, diphtheria, typhus fever and cerebrospinal meningitis can be treated as infectious diseases for the grant of quarantine leave. The list is closed on its face, and it is the same list that appears in the staff regulations of statutory corporations framed decades earlier.

Chicken pox is the one disease the rule addresses by name in order to exclude it. Statute 25(3) provides that in the case of chicken pox no quarantine leave can be granted unless the health officer considers that, in view of some doubt about the nature of the disease, there is reason for the grant. The exception exists because chicken pox and smallpox were clinically confused in the era the rule was drafted, and the health officer’s doubt about which disease is present is what reopens the door.

Smallpox illustrates how far the list has travelled from current epidemiology. The World Health Organization certified the global eradication of smallpox in 1980, so one of the six named diseases can no longer occur, while the infections that closed Indian offices in 2020 and 2021 are not on the list at all. An employer who wants quarantine leave to reach a modern infection has to amend its own rules to say so; the naming of six diseases is a rule of the instrument, not a medical judgment made case by case.

Duration, pay and the leave account

The ordinary maximum is 21 days and the exceptional maximum is 30 days. Statute 25(1) of the IIT First Statutes 2017 sets the ordinary duration at twenty one days and permits extension up to thirty days in exceptional circumstances, and Regulation 68 of the LIC (Staff) Regulations 1960 uses the same two figures. The certificate of the medical or public health officer fixes the actual period within those caps.

Absence beyond the caps changes character. Statute 25(1) provides that any absence beyond these limits has to be treated as regular leave, and Regulation 68 provides that any leave necessary for quarantine purposes in excess of the period shall be treated as ordinary leave. In practice the employee is on earned leave, half pay leave or extraordinary leave from day 22 or day 31, debited to the leave account in the ordinary way.

Pay does not stop. An employee on quarantine leave is not treated as absent from duty and the pay is not interrupted, in the words of Statute 25(1). That is why the period is not debited to the leave account within the caps: the employee is treated as on duty for pay purposes rather than as on leave, which is the same technique the CCS (Leave) Rules 1972 use for maternity leave under Rule 43(5) and paternity leave under Rule 43-A(3), both of which are also kept off the leave account.

When the employee is the person infected

Quarantine leave stops at the household. Statute 25(2) of the IIT First Statutes 2017 provides that quarantine leave is not admissible if the member of staff is himself suffering from an infectious disease. Regulation 68 of the LIC (Staff) Regulations 1960 states the consequence: the employee is then entitled only to privilege, sick or extraordinary leave.

Under the CCS (Leave) Rules 1972 the routes for the employee’s own illness are half pay leave under Rule 29 and commuted leave under Rule 30, both taken on a medical certificate in the form Rule 19 prescribes, with commuted leave paid at the earned leave rate and debited at twice the number of days of half pay leave. Where the illness or injury is attributable to, or aggravated in, the performance of official duty, the head is work-related illness and injury leave under Rule 44, substituted by the CCS (Leave) (Fourth Amendment) Rules 2018 in place of hospital leave and special disability leave.

An employee who falls ill during a household quarantine crosses from one head to the other on the day of the employee’s own illness. Under a code that carries both, the quarantine leave ends and the sickness leave begins; the employee does not draw both for the same period.

Railway servants: Rule 555 and the residue in Rule 507

Rule 555 of the Indian Railway Establishment Code, Volume I, is headed Quarantine Leave and its entire text reads Deleted. Railway servants are also outside the CCS (Leave) Rules 1972 by Rule 2(a), which excludes them by name along with persons in casual or daily-rated or part-time employment, persons paid from contingencies, workmen in industrial establishments and persons in work-charged establishments. A railway employee with an infectious case at home therefore has neither code to fall back on.

One residue of the deleted head survives inside the same chapter. The Explanation to Rule 507, which governs the combination of different kinds of leave, states that casual leave is not recognised as leave under the rules and shall not be combined with any other kind of leave, and then records that there is no objection to casual leave being followed by quarantine leave. The cross-reference outlived the rule it points at, which is the ordinary fate of an internal reference when a single rule is deleted rather than the chapter renumbered.

The practical effect for railway staff is that leave for a household infection is applied for as leave of a kind that is due under Chapter V of the Establishment Code. Special casual leave on the railways is governed by Railway Board instruction rather than by the Establishment Code, so it turns on what the Board has said and not on any head in Rule 555.

All India Services officers

The All India Services (Leave) Rules 1955 carry no quarantine leave head. An Indian Administrative Service, Indian Police Service or Indian Forest Service officer is governed by those Rules and not by the CCS (Leave) Rules 1972, and the outcome on this question is the same under both: the officer applies for leave of a kind that is due.

That matters because the All India Services rules do carry heads the central civilian rules lack or state differently, including study leave regulations of 1960 and special disability leave regulations of 1957 notified as separate instruments. Quarantine leave is not among them. The absence is uniform across the central civil services, the All India Services and the railway code, and it is only outside government service proper, in the statutes and staff regulations of institutes and corporations, that the head is live.

Institutes and statutory corporations where quarantine leave is live

The First Statutes of the newer Indian Institutes of Technology are the clearest live central instrument. IIT Goa, IIT Bhilai, IIT Jammu and IIT Hyderabad each had First Statutes notified on 31 July 2017 under the Institutes of Technology Act, 1961, each carrying quarantine leave at Statute 13(l) and Statute 25. A member of staff of one of those institutes has an entitlement in the terms set out above, granted by the authority competent to grant leave on a health officer’s certificate.

The Life Insurance Corporation of India (Staff) Regulations, 1960 keep the head at Regulation 68 for Corporation employees. West Bengal Municipal (Employees’ Service) Rules, 2010 list quarantine leave at Rule 77(1) among the kinds of leave admissible to a teacher or non-teaching employee of an institution, and the Orissa State Financial Corporation (Staff) Regulations, 1975 carry the same formula, chicken pox exception included.

The pattern is consistent, and it is the pattern this article exists to make plain. Bodies that wrote their own service rules by copying the older government leave code kept quarantine leave; the government instruments that were rewritten, in 1955 for the All India Services and in 1972 for the central civil services, did not carry it forward. Employees of autonomous bodies such as Kendriya Vidyalaya Sangathan and of statutory corporations therefore have to read their own service regulations rather than assume the central position applies to them.

State government and local body employees

Several state governments and local bodies retained the older text and continue to grant quarantine leave to their own staff, in some cases with a longer list of diseases and specific provisions for employees who handle food. Rule 77(1) of the West Bengal Municipal (Employees’ Service) Rules 2010 is one example in a rule set made as recently as 2010, which shows the head is not a historical curiosity everywhere.

A state government employee should read the leave chapter of the service rules that govern their own service rather than the central position. The two diverge on this head, and an employee who relies on a central government article to claim quarantine leave in a state service, or the reverse, will be wrong about their own entitlement.

COVID-19: what the central government actually did

The Department of Personnel and Training used commuted leave, not quarantine leave. Office Memorandum F. No. 11013/9/2014-Estt.(A-III) dated 20 March 2020, headed “Preventive measures to achieve ‘social distancing’ to contain the spread of COVID19: Relaxation in CCS (Leave) Rules, 1972”, recorded that leave sanctioning authorities had been advised by the Office Memorandum of even number dated 17 March 2020 to sanction leave to officials who wished to self-quarantine as a preventive measure. It then decided, in relaxation of the CCS (Leave) Rules 1972 and with the approval of the competent authority, to grant commuted leave without production of a medical certificate to officials above 50 years of age with underlying conditions, namely diabetes, respiratory problems, renal diseases and other life-threatening illness, for a period up to 4 April 2020, so as to avoid unnecessary burden on the health care system. Paragraph 2 applied the instruction to ministries, departments and attached and subordinate offices, and said similar instructions may be issued to autonomous and statutory bodies.

Attendance was handled separately and by roster. The Office Memorandum of even number dated 19 March 2020 required Heads of Department to have 50% of Group B and Group C employees attend office each day with the rest working from home on a weekly roster, staggered the working hours of those attending into three groups starting at 9 AM, 9.30 AM and 10 AM, exempted essential and emergency services, and remained in force till 4 April 2020. A further Office Memorandum of even number in April 2021 again capped physical attendance during the second wave.

The choice of instrument is the point. Every one of these orders worked inside the CCS (Leave) Rules 1972, by relaxing a condition of an existing head or by regulating attendance, and none created a leave head for household infection. That is the direct answer to the question readers bring to this page: the pandemic did not revive quarantine leave for central government employees, and an employee who was told to isolate in 2020 or 2021 was on commuted leave, on leave of a kind due, on special casual leave under a departmental instruction, or working from home.

Quarantine leave compared with special casual leave, sick leave and hospital leave

Four heads are confused with one another, and the difference between them is the trigger rather than the payment. The comparison below is a salary-calculator.in table drawn from the CCS (Leave) Rules 1972 and the instruments named in each row.

Special casual leave is the closest working substitute for a central government employee, because it is granted by instruction and not debited to the leave account, but it is available only for the occasions the instruction names and carries no entitlement for household infection. Sick leave is the employee’s own route and is debited. Work-related illness and injury leave requires the illness to be attributable to, or aggravated in, the performance of official duty, which an infection caught at home is not.

What a central government employee with an infectious case at home can do

There is no head that keeps a central government civilian employee on full pay, outside the leave account, because a household member is infectious. The routes that exist are earned leave under Rules 26 to 28, half pay leave under Rule 29, commuted leave under Rule 30 where a medical certificate under Rule 19 covers the case, casual leave for a short absence, and extraordinary leave under Rule 32 where no leave is at credit.

Two administrative routes sit alongside the leave account. The first is special casual leave, where the ministry or department has issued an instruction that reaches the occasion. The second is a work-from-home or staggered-attendance instruction of the kind the Department of Personnel and Training issued on 19 March 2020, under which the employee is on duty rather than on leave. Both depend on an instruction being in force; neither is an entitlement the employee can demand under the 1972 Rules.

An employee of an institute, a statutory corporation or a state service should check their own leave chapter before assuming the central position. The entitlement turns on which service code applies, and on this head the codes disagree with one another more sharply than on any other kind of leave.

Who sanctions quarantine leave and what the certificate must say

The authority competent to grant leave sanctions quarantine leave, and only on a certificate. Statute 25(1) of the IIT First Statutes 2017 makes the certificate of a medical or public health officer the sole basis for the grant, and Regulation 68 of the LIC (Staff) Regulations 1960 does the same, with its Note extending the expression to the medical officer in charge.

The certificate has to establish two things: that an infectious disease is present in the family or household, and that the employee is precluded from attending office in consequence. The period the officer certifies fixes the leave, subject to the 21 day ordinary cap and the 30 day exceptional cap. A certificate of the employee’s own illness will not do, because Statute 25(2) excludes the employee’s own infection from the head altogether.

Applicability

For central government civilian employees under the CCS (Leave) Rules 1972, quarantine leave is not a current head and household infection is met from the employee’s own leave account or by an administrative instruction. The position is the same for All India Services officers under the All India Services (Leave) Rules 1955, and for railway servants, whose Rule 555 stands deleted.

Quarantine leave is live for staff of the newer Indian Institutes of Technology under Statute 25 of their First Statutes of 2017, for Life Insurance Corporation employees under Regulation 68 of the Staff Regulations of 1960, and for employees governed by state and municipal service rules that retained the older text. Anyone in that second group reads their own instrument for the disease list, the caps and the certificate requirement, because those are rules of the instrument and not a common standard.

Related Articles

• CCS (Leave) Rules 1972
• Special casual leave
• Casual leave
• Earned leave
• Half pay leave
• Commuted leave
• Leave not due
• Extraordinary leave
• Sick leave
• Work related illness and injury leave
• Hospital leave
• Special disability leave
• Maternity leave for government employees
• Paternity leave
• Child care leave
• Study leave
• Sabbatical leave
• Vacation department leave
• Leave salary
• Leave encashment
• Leave travel concession
• Joining time
• Fundamental Rules
• Supplementary Rules
• Indian Railway Establishment Code
• Railway employees
• All India Services
• Kendriya Vidyalaya Sangathan
• Navodaya Vidyalaya Samiti
• Department of Personnel and Training
• Central Government Health Scheme
• Central government holidays
• Qualifying service
• Central government employees in India
• Central government pension
• 7th Central Pay Commission

External references

• Department of Personnel and Training, CCS (Leave) Rules 1972
• Department of Personnel and Training, All India Services (Leave) Rules 1955
• Department of Personnel and Training, Office Memorandum of 20 March 2020 on relaxation in the CCS (Leave) Rules 1972
• Department of Personnel and Training, Office Memorandum of 19 March 2020 on preventive measures
• Indian Institute of Technology Goa, First Statutes 2017 as notified in the Gazette
• Department of Personnel and Training

References

1. Central Civil Services (Leave) Rules, 1972, published as Part III of the Fundamental Rules and Supplementary Rules: Rule 2(a) on excluded categories, Rules 26 to 32, Rule 19 on medical certificates, Rules 43 to 49 and Rules 50 to 63. The Rules carry no head of quarantine leave.
2. First Statutes of the Indian Institute of Technology Goa, 2017, notified as G.S.R. 978(E) on 31 July 2017 under Section 26 read with Section 27 of the Institutes of Technology Act, 1961, Gazette of India, Extraordinary, Part II Section 3(i): Statute 13(l) and Statute 25(1) to 25(3).
3. First Statutes of the Indian Institute of Technology Hyderabad, 2017 (G.S.R. 968(E)), Bhilai (G.S.R. 980(E)) and Jammu (G.S.R. 981(E)), all dated 31 July 2017, carrying the same Statute 25.
4. Life Insurance Corporation of India (Staff) Regulations, 1960: Regulation 60 on the kinds of leave and Regulation 68 on quarantine leave, with its Note on the expression “Medical or Public Health Officer”.
5. Indian Railway Establishment Code, Volume I: Rule 555, Quarantine Leave, which reads Deleted, and the Explanation to Rule 507 on the combination of different kinds of leave.
6. All India Services (Leave) Rules, 1955, as updated to 15 March 2008, which carry no head of quarantine leave.
7. Central Civil Services (Leave) (Fourth Amendment) Rules, 2018, notified as G.S.R. 1209(E) on 11 December 2018, effective 14 December 2018, omitting Rule 46 and substituting Rule 44.
8. Department of Personnel and Training, Office Memorandum F. No. 11013/9/2014-Estt.(A-III) dated 20 March 2020, “Preventive measures to achieve ‘social distancing’ to contain the spread of COVID19: Relaxation in CCS (Leave) Rules, 1972”, which recites the Office Memorandum of even number dated 17 March 2020.
9. Department of Personnel and Training, Office Memorandum F. No. 11013/9/2014-Estt.(A-III) dated 19 March 2020 on preventive measures, attendance rosters and staggered timings.
10. West Bengal Municipal (Employees’ Service) Rules, 2010, Rule 77(1), listing quarantine leave among the kinds of leave admissible.