Restricted and Gazetted Holidays for Central Government Offices

Restricted and gazetted holidays are the two kinds of holiday observed by central government offices under the annual holiday Office Memorandum issued by the Department of Personnel and Training from its Pers. Policy (JCA) Section. A gazetted holiday, also called a closed holiday, shuts the office for everyone. A restricted holiday does not: the office stays open, and an individual employee may take the day off by availing one of the two restricted holidays the order allows. Both are holidays under the DoPT holiday policy, and neither is leave under the CCS (Leave) Rules 1972.

The arithmetic is fixed by the order for each calendar year. Office Memorandum F. No. 12/2/2023-JCA dated 16 July 2026 gives offices in Delhi and New Delhi 17 closed holidays in Annexure I for the year 2027, of which three are the national holidays, and lists 32 occasions in Annexure II from which each employee picks two. Offices outside Delhi reach the same 17 by a different route: 14 holidays are compulsory under paragraph 2, and three more are chosen under paragraph 3.1 from a list of 12.

One distinction carries most of the practical weight, and the usual statement of it is too generous. A closed holiday or a weekly off falling inside a spell of casual leave is excluded from the spell and never debited, so a five-day debit can produce an absence of nine or ten calendar days. That rule belongs to casual leave and nothing else. Inside a spell of earned leave, a Sunday and a gazetted holiday are both counted and both debited, and only a holiday adjoining the spell escapes under Rule 22.

The three kinds of central government holiday

Central government holidays fall into three groups, and the grouping is the order’s own. The three national holidays are Republic Day on 26 January, Independence Day on 15 August, and Mahatma Gandhi’s birthday on 2 October. Gazetted or closed holidays number 17 for offices in Delhi and New Delhi, the three national holidays included, and the office is shut on each of them. Restricted holidays are the 32 occasions in Annexure II of the order for 2027, from which each employee takes two.

The first two groups close the office and require no application from anyone. The third does neither: the office works, attendance is expected, and the employee who wants the day declares that they are spending one of their two.

How the annual list is fixed

The Department of Personnel and Training issues one Office Memorandum a year, in the middle of the preceding year, and the same file number carries it forward. F. No. 12/2/2023-JCA dated 3 July 2025 notified the holidays for 2026, and F. No. 12/2/2023-JCA dated 16 July 2026 notified those for 2027. The date, not the number, identifies the year. Annexure I carries the closed holidays with their Saka dates and the day of the week; Annexure II carries the restricted holidays.

For the Central Secretariat and offices in Delhi and New Delhi the order fixes all 17 closed holidays directly, and paragraph 3.1 records that the three variable holidays for Delhi and New Delhi are selected by DoPT itself rather than by any committee. That point is easy to miss, because the same paragraph is mostly about the arrangement for the rest of the country.

Paragraph 3.2 disposes of the question employees ask most often about the list. Where a holiday falls on a Sunday or on another weekly off, no substitute is given. The holiday is simply absorbed into the weekend, and 2027 loses two that way, with Independence Day on a Sunday and Mahatma Gandhi’s birthday on a Saturday.

The three variable holidays outside Delhi

Paragraph 2 of the order names 14 holidays that every central government office outside Delhi observes compulsorily, the three national holidays among them. Paragraph 3.1 supplies the remaining three from a list of 12, and the choice is not made by the office.

The choosing authority is the Central Government Employees Welfare Coordination Committee in the State capital, acting if necessary in consultation with Coordination Committees at other places in the State. The order then binds the result: the final list is “applicable uniformly to all Central Government offices within the concerned State, shall be notified accordingly and no change can be carried out thereafter”. An office cannot substitute a local festival of its own once the State list is notified, and an employee posted in two States in the same year may find two different sets of three.

Paragraph 4 gives the Coordination Committees a parallel power over the optional list. They may draw up their own restricted-holiday lists for occasions of local importance, subject to one condition: the nine occasions left over after the three closed holidays are picked under paragraph 3.1 must appear in the State restricted-holiday list. A festival that loses the contest for a closure is therefore guaranteed a place among the options.

Paragraph 8 takes the Union Territories out of the scheme entirely. Their Administrations decide their own holiday lists under Ministry of Home Affairs instructions, not under this order.

The three national holidays

No separate declaratory instrument makes Republic Day, Independence Day and Gandhi Jayanti national holidays for central government service. The annual Office Memorandum does the work itself, in three places. Paragraph 2 lists them as the first three of the 14 compulsory holidays outside Delhi. Paragraph 7 makes them the compulsory core for industrial, commercial and trading establishments, which observe up to 16 holidays rather than 17 and settle the rest themselves. Paragraph 9 requires Indian missions abroad to include them before selecting any of their own.

The effect is that the three days reach every kind of central government establishment through a route the other holidays do not take. A State Coordination Committee cannot trade one away under paragraph 3.1, because they sit in paragraph 2 and not in the list of 12.

Restricted holidays: the optional two

A restricted holiday, sometimes called an optional holiday, is not a closure. Paragraph 1 of the order allows each employee to avail any two holidays from the Annexure II list during the year, and the list is long and varied so that employees of different faiths and regions each find occasions that matter to them. The 2027 Annexure II runs to 32 entries.

The entitlement is fixed for the calendar year by that paragraph and does not accumulate into the next one. Nothing in the order creates an exception to the figure of two, and paragraph 3.2 gives no substitute where a chosen occasion falls on a weekly off, so an employee whose festival lands on a Sunday has spent nothing and gained nothing.

The order says nothing about declaring the two choices in advance. Paragraph 2.14 of the DoPT brochure on casual leave points the other way, directing the section register to record the date on which a restricted holiday was availed, which is an entry made after the event rather than a reservation made before it. Offices that ask for the year’s choices in January are following local practice, not an instruction.

Restricted holidays and casual leave

A restricted holiday is a holiday, not leave, so taking one debits no account. That follows from paragraph 1 of the annual order, which allows it out of the Annexure II holiday list, and from paragraph 2.14 of the casual leave brochure, which records casual leave and a restricted holiday as distinct entries in the same register.

The two combine. Paragraph 2.5 of the brochure states that restricted holidays can be prefixed or suffixed to casual leave, on the authority of Ministry of Home Affairs Office Memorandum No. 20/37/60-Pub.I dated 7 October 1960. An employee may therefore attach casual leave on either side of a restricted holiday and lengthen the break without spending a third day.

Casual leave itself is not leave under the rules. The Explanation to Rule 11 of the CCS (Leave) Rules 1972 puts it plainly, that casual leave is not recognised as leave under those rules and shall not be combined with any other kind of leave admissible under them, and paragraph 2.1 of the brochure adds that an employee on casual leave is not treated as absent from duty and their pay is not intermitted. The combination with a restricted holiday works precisely because neither is leave.

The holiday rule inside a spell of casual leave is the generous one. Paragraph 5 of DoPT Office Memorandum No. 28016/3/98-Estt.(A) dated 15 June 1998 provides that Sundays or closed holidays preceding a period of casual leave or coming at its end may be prefixed or suffixed, and that public holidays and weekly offs falling within the period of casual leave shall not be counted as part of it. Intervening holidays are excluded from the spell altogether rather than merely left undebited, which is why the debit and the calendar diverge. The quota is 8 days a year under paragraph 2 of that order, and not more than 5 days may be taken at one time, relaxable by the Head of Office in exceptional circumstances.

Holidays inside a spell of earned leave are debited

The rule that stretches casual leave does not extend to regular leave, and treating it as though it does is the common error. The CCS (Leave) Rules 1972 contain a single provision on the subject, Rule 22, headed “Combination of holidays with leave”, and it addresses prefixing and suffixing only. Rule 22(1)(i) deems a government servant permitted to leave station at the close of the day before a holiday or series of holidays adjoining the leave, or to return on the day following, subject to three provisos on the handling of securities and moneys, on an early departure entailing an early transfer from another station, and on a delayed return delaying a further transfer. Rule 22(3)(a) and (b) fix when the rearrangement of pay takes effect.

Nothing in the Rules excludes a holiday falling inside the spell, and Rule 22(1)(ii) says the opposite for leave on medical certificate. Holidays outside the certified period are prefixed or suffixed automatically, while holidays preceding the day on which the servant is certified “shall be treated as part of the leave”.

The government states the general position in the same terms. Clauses (ii) and (iii) of DoPT Office Memorandum No. 13018/2/2008-Estt.(L) dated 18 November 2008, clarifying child care leave, direct that the leave is to be treated like earned leave and sanctioned as such, and that consequently Saturdays, Sundays and gazetted holidays falling during the period of leave would also count, as in the case of earned leave.

So the planning advice runs one way and not the other. A spell of earned leave or commuted leave that begins the day after a closed holiday and ends the day before another picks up two free days at the edges under Rule 22(1)(i), which is worth doing around a festival or a leave travel concession trip. A spell that swallows a long weekend in its middle is debited for every day of it.

The Note to Rule 22(3) adds one extension that is easy to overlook: compensatory leave granted in lieu of duty performed on a Sunday or a holiday for a full day may itself be treated as a holiday for the purpose of Rule 22. A compensatory off can therefore be prefixed or suffixed to a spell of leave in the same way a gazetted holiday can.

Working on a closed holiday: compensatory leave

An employee required to attend on a closed holiday or a weekly off does not lose the day. Ministry of Finance, Department of Expenditure, Office Memorandum No. 15011/2/E.II(B)/76 dated 11 August 1976 governs, and paragraph 3(b)(ii) provides that staff required to perform overtime duty for the full prescribed hours of work on Sundays, other weekly or fortnightly off days, Second Saturdays or other holidays “should, as a rule, be granted compensatory leave in lieu”. Duty beyond a full day earns a day of compensatory leave plus overtime allowance for the excess, less one hour of free duty. Half a day or less earns half a day of compensatory leave, and two such half days make one full day.

Note 2 to the paragraph answers the timing question the phrase “in lieu” leaves open. Compensatory leave should normally be granted within one month of becoming due, relaxable where a Joint Secretary or a Head of Department certifies that granting it within a month would cause serious dislocation. There is no limit on how much may accumulate, but not more than two days may be availed at a time.

Eligibility is narrower than the phrase compensatory off suggests in ordinary speech. Paragraph 2 covers non-gazetted central government servants paid from Civil Estimates who are office staff or whose hours and nature of work are comparable. Paragraph 5 excludes gazetted officers, field and inspection staff, staff car drivers, resident night-duty clerks, part-time and contract staff, and staff covered by the Factories Act 1948 or the Minimum Wages (Central) Rules 1950. Paragraph 8 bars double compensation, so no compensatory leave is due for work already paid for as overtime allowance.

Cash in place of the day off is available only in very exceptional circumstances, on a certificate from an officer not below the rank of Joint Secretary in the Secretariat, or from the Head of Department, that compensatory leave is not possible. Compensatory leave is itself distinct from leave under the rules: it is earned by working a day that should have been off and availed as a substitute day, and nothing is debited to a leave account. The 7th Central Pay Commission recorded the same practice at paragraph 8.6.4 and relied on it to refuse a separate allowance for weekend working.

National holiday allowance: who actually draws it

The national holiday allowance is not a general entitlement for anyone on duty on 26 January. Paragraph 8.6.9 of the 7th Central Pay Commission report describes it as paid to non-gazetted railway employees rostered to work on a national holiday, at pre-revision rates of Rs. 256, Rs. 318 and Rs. 420 a day by pay in pay band and grade pay. Paragraph 8.6.5 brought non-gazetted Intelligence Bureau staff under it, for up to twelve holidays a year including the three national holidays, and abolished the Holiday Compensatory Allowance they had drawn until then.

Paragraph 8.6.11 raised the rates by 50%, to Rs. 384 a day for Levels 1 and 2, Rs. 477 for Levels 3 to 5 and Rs. 630 for Levels 6 to 8, the top slab confined to non-gazetted staff, and recorded that although there are only three national holidays the allowance is granted for twelve days a year because of operational constraints. Paragraph 8.6.12 adds 25% each time dearness allowance rises by 50%, which took the three rates to about Rs. 480, Rs. 596 and Rs. 788 from 1 January 2024. The Government decision is in Department of Expenditure Resolution No. 11-1/2016-IC dated 6 July 2017.

Holidays declared outside the annual list

Four situations move or add a holiday after the Annexure I list is printed, and each has its own paragraph or its own order.

Moon-dependent occasions shift. Paragraphs 5.1, 5.2 and 5.3 of the 2027 order provide that where Id-ul-Fitr, Id-ul-Zuha, Muharram or Id-e-Milad falls on a date other than the one shown, the holiday moves to the day actually observed, announced through the Press Information Bureau, television, All India Radio or the newspapers, and Heads of Department act on that announcement without waiting for a formal order.

Diwali has a State-specific variant. Paragraph 6 allows Naraka Chaturdasi to be observed in place of Deepavali where that day alone is the State Government’s compulsory Diwali holiday.

A death does not ordinarily close the office. Paragraph 3 of DoPT Office Memorandum No. 12/9/94-JCA dated 14 January 1998 states that no holiday shall be declared in the event of the death of any person other than the incumbent President of India or the incumbent Prime Minister of India, referring to Ministry of Home Affairs Office Memorandum No. 3/2/97-Public dated 21 November 1997. State mourning for anyone else runs without a closure.

A closure may still be added by a separate order, as DoPT has done for the birthday of Dr B. R. Ambedkar on 14 April. Such an order sits outside the annual list and does not reduce the 17.

Polling day and special casual leave

Election closures are governed by a different file. DoPT Office Memorandum F. No. 12/1/2022-JCA dated 4 November 2025, applying the guidelines issued in Office Memorandum No. 12/14/99-JCA dated 10 October 2001, closes central government offices, including industrial establishments, in the notified areas on the day of poll for a general election to a State Legislative Assembly.

A bye-election is treated differently, and the difference matters to anyone who assumes a poll always means a closed office. The office works, and the concession is individual: an employee who is a bona fide voter in the constituency going to the poll gets special casual leave for the day, and so does an employee registered there but posted outside it.

The five-day week and weekly offs

A weekly off is not a holiday, though the two behave alike under Rule 22 and under paragraph 5 of the 1998 casual leave order. Central government offices have worked a five-day week since June 1985, continued by paragraph 2 of DoPT Office Memorandum No. 12/9/94-JCA dated 14 January 1998, which also contemplated a review for offices dealing with the public and for commercial offices that may need a six-day week. The 5th Central Pay Commission examined hours of work and holidays in Chapter 118 of its report.

The practical consequence is that Saturday and Sunday are weekly offs rather than entries in Annexure I, and a closed holiday landing on either is lost under paragraph 3.2 without a substitute.

Establishments that follow a different list

Industrial, commercial and trading establishments of the central government observe up to 16 holidays under paragraph 7, against 17 for an administrative office, and the three national holidays are the compulsory core of the 16 while the establishment settles the rest itself.

Indian missions abroad operate under paragraph 9, which sends them to DoPT Office Memorandum No. 12/5/2002-JCA dated 17 December 2002 and states the condition: a mission may select 10 holidays of its own only after including the three national holidays, Prophet Mohammad’s Birthday, Dussehra, Guru Nanak’s Birthday and Christmas Day, where those fall on days of weekly off.

Railway servants follow Railway Board holiday orders and the Indian Railway Establishment Code rather than the JCA Office Memorandum, which is the same pattern that gives them their own leave, pension and conduct rules. Union Territory Administrations fix their own lists under paragraph 8.

Vacation departments, joining time and tour

Three adjoining entitlements are regularly confused with holidays, and none of them is one.

Vacation in a vacation department is neither a holiday under the annual order nor leave under the leave rules. Rule 28 of the CCS (Leave) Rules 1972 reduces the earned leave a vacation department employee earns against the vacation availed, with Notes 1 and 2 governing what counts as availing it, and Rule 28(2) allows vacation to be combined with leave.

Joining time follows Rule 6(2) of the CCS (Joining Time) Rules 1979, which permits it to be combined with vacation and with regular leave but not with casual leave, so the reasoning that lets a restricted holiday sit beside casual leave does not carry across.

Casual leave taken while on tour is restricted by Ministry of Finance Office Memorandum No. 1(14)-E.IV(B)/66 dated 7 February 1967, which bars daily allowance for the days concerned.

Not the same as bank holidays

The bank holiday list rests on a statute, not on a personnel order. Section 25 of the Negotiable Instruments Act 1881 provides that an instrument maturing on a public holiday is deemed due on the next preceding business day, and its Explanation defines a public holiday as including Sundays “and any other day declared by the Central Government, by notification in the Official Gazette, to be a public holiday”. The power under the section is therefore the Central Government’s.

State Governments exercise it by delegation, under Government of India, Ministry of Home Affairs Notification No. 20/25/56-Public(I) dated 8 June 1957, which State public-holiday notifications recite by number and date. Each State issues its own list, so the days on which banks close vary across the country in a way the DoPT office list does not.

The annual DoPT order keeps the two apart in terms. Paragraph 10 directs that holidays for banks shall be regulated by the extant instructions of the Department of Financial Services, Ministry of Finance. A day may therefore be a bank holiday in one State and an ordinary working day for the central government office next door.

Applicability

The scheme applies to central government offices and their employees, fixed each year by the DoPT holiday Office Memorandum, with three national holidays compulsory everywhere, 17 closed holidays for an administrative office and two restricted holidays for each employee. Offices outside Delhi reach the same 17 through the paragraph 3.1 Coordination Committee mechanism, industrial and commercial establishments observe up to 16 under paragraph 7, Indian missions abroad follow the 2002 order through paragraph 9, and Union Territory Administrations decide their own lists under paragraph 8.

State government employees, and employees of autonomous bodies, follow the lists fixed by their own governments or managements, which often track the central pattern without being bound by it. An employee confirms the holidays that apply to their own office from the current year’s order and, outside Delhi, from the State Coordination Committee notification made under it.

Related Articles

• Central government holidays
• Central government holidays 2027
• Casual leave
• Special casual leave
• Compensatory off
• National holiday allowance
• Overtime allowance
• Earned leave
• Half pay leave
• Commuted leave
• Leave not due
• Extraordinary leave
• Child care leave
• Child adoption leave
• Maternity leave
• Paternity leave
• Sabbatical leave
• Quarantine leave
• Study leave
• Vacation department leave
• Leave encashment
• Joining time
• Leave travel concession
• Daily allowance on tour
• CCS (Leave) Rules 1972
• Central Government Employees Welfare Coordination Committee
• Department of Personnel and Training
• Department of Expenditure
• Ministry of Home Affairs
• Intelligence Bureau
• Railway employees
• Indian Railway Establishment Code
• Central government employees in India
• Dearness allowance
• 7th Central Pay Commission
• 5th Central Pay Commission

External references

• DoPT holiday list for 2027, F. No. 12/2/2023-JCA dated 16 July 2026
• Department of Personnel and Training, office memoranda
• Department of Personnel and Training
• Department of Expenditure, Ministry of Finance
• Negotiable Instruments Act 1881, India Code
• Ministry of Home Affairs

References

1. Department of Personnel and Training, Office Memorandum F. No. 12/2/2023-JCA dated 16 July 2026, “Holidays to be observed in Central Government Offices during the year 2027”, Pers. Policy (JCA) Section: paragraph 1 (two restricted holidays from Annexure II), paragraph 2 (14 compulsory holidays outside Delhi), paragraph 3.1 (three holidays chosen by the Central Government Employees Welfare Coordination Committee in the State capital, notified uniformly for the State with no change thereafter; the three variable holidays for Delhi and New Delhi selected by DoPT), paragraph 3.2 (no substitute where a holiday falls on a weekly off), paragraph 4 (State restricted-holiday lists), paragraphs 5.1 to 5.3 (moon-dependent occasions and announcement without a formal order), paragraph 6 (Naraka Chaturdasi in place of Deepavali), paragraph 7 (up to 16 holidays for industrial, commercial and trading establishments), paragraph 8 (Union Territory Administrations), paragraph 9 (Indian missions abroad), paragraph 10 (bank holidays regulated by the Department of Financial Services).
2. Department of Personnel and Training, Office Memorandum F. No. 12/2/2023-JCA dated 3 July 2025, “Holidays to be observed in Central Government Offices during the year 2026”.
3. Central Civil Services (Leave) Rules 1972: Rule 11, Explanation (casual leave not recognised as leave and not combinable with leave under the rules); Rule 22 (combination of holidays with leave), sub-rule (1)(i) and its provisos, sub-rule (1)(ii)(a) and (b) on leave on medical certificate, sub-rule (3)(a) and (b) and the Note treating compensatory leave as a holiday; Rule 28 and Rule 28(2) (vacation departments).
4. Department of Personnel and Training, Office Memorandum No. 28016/3/98-Estt.(A) dated 15 June 1998: paragraph 2 (8 days of casual leave a year, not more than 5 days at a time), paragraph 3 (mid-year entrants), paragraph 4 (10 days for operating and maintenance staff), paragraph 5 (prefixing, suffixing and the exclusion of intervening holidays), paragraph 6 (rescinding the earlier instructions of 23 December 1959, 20 August 1960, 8 July 1974 and 17 September 1977).
5. Department of Personnel and Training, Office Memorandum No. 12/9/94-JCA dated 14 January 1998: paragraph 2 (five-day week), paragraph 3 (no holiday on a death other than that of the incumbent President or Prime Minister, referring to Ministry of Home Affairs Office Memorandum No. 3/2/97-Public dated 21 November 1997).
6. 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), as reproduced at paragraph 2.5 of the Department of Personnel and Training brochure on the grant of casual leave and special casual leave; paragraph 2.1 (casual leave not a recognised form of leave and pay not intermitted) and paragraph 2.14 (register entry for casual leave or a restricted holiday) of the same brochure.
7. Department of Personnel and Training, Office Memorandum No. 13018/2/2008-Estt.(L) dated 18 November 2008, clauses (ii) and (iii) (Saturdays, Sundays and gazetted holidays falling during a period of leave count, as in the case of earned leave).
8. Ministry of Finance, Department of Expenditure, Office Memorandum No. 15011/2/E.II(B)/76 dated 11 August 1976: paragraph 2 (coverage), paragraph 3(b)(ii) and Note 2 (compensatory leave in lieu, normally within one month, no accumulation limit, not more than two days at a time, cash only on a certificate), paragraph 5 (exclusions), paragraph 8 (no compensatory leave where overtime allowance is paid).
9. Seventh Central Pay Commission report, paragraphs 8.6.4 (compensatory off as the existing practice), 8.6.5 (Intelligence Bureau staff, twelve holidays, abolition of Holiday Compensatory Allowance), 8.6.9 (non-gazetted railway employees rostered on a national holiday), 8.6.11 (rates of Rs. 384, Rs. 477 and Rs. 630 a day, and the twelve-day grant) and 8.6.12 (25% enhancement on each 50% rise in dearness allowance); Government decision in Department of Expenditure Resolution No. 11-1/2016-IC dated 6 July 2017.
10. Department of Personnel and Training, Office Memorandum F. No. 12/1/2022-JCA dated 4 November 2025, applying the guidelines in Office Memorandum No. 12/14/99-JCA dated 10 October 2001 (closure of central government offices on the day of poll for a general election, and special casual leave for a bona fide voter at a bye-election).
11. Department of Personnel and Training, Office Memorandum No. 12/5/2002-JCA dated 17 December 2002 (holidays for Indian missions abroad), as applied by paragraph 9 of the order at reference 1.
12. Negotiable Instruments Act 1881, Section 25 and its Explanation (a public holiday is one declared by the Central Government by notification in the Official Gazette), read with Government of India, Ministry of Home Affairs Notification No. 20/25/56-Public(I) dated 8 June 1957, under which State Governments declare public holidays.
13. Central Civil Services (Joining Time) Rules 1979, Rule 6(2) (joining time combinable with vacation and regular leave, not with casual leave); Ministry of Finance, Office Memorandum No. 1(14)-E.IV(B)/66 dated 7 February 1967 (casual leave on tour and the daily allowance bar).