Welcome to Uttar Pradesh — the land of unlimited holidays.
The largest state in the country now enjoys the maximum number of holidays in a year — 204 out of the 365 days in a year are holidays.
The state government has 36 days in a year listed as public holidays. By adding 2 restricted and 3 local holidays, the tally of holidays goes up to 41 days in a year.
The five day week system in the state government offices gives 52 Saturdays and 52 Sundays to the employees, which mean another 104 days of no work.
Besides, every employee is entitled to 14 days’ casual leave, 30 days’ earn leave and 15 days’ travel leave (LTC) which adds up to another 59 days.
All this adds up to 204 holidays in a year. Apart from this, a government employee can take medical leave as and when required.
Interestingly, the list of public holidays began swelling after 2005 when political leaders started announcing holidays to pamper particular vote banks. The Mulayam Singh government, for instance, announced public holidays on Parshuram Jayanti, Maharaja Agrasen Jayanti, the birthday of the Prophet, Vishwakarma Puja, Alvida Namaaz, Bhai Dooj and Chitragupta Jayanti.
The Mayawati government that came to power in 2007 announced public holidays on the birth and death anniversaries of late Kanshi Ram and death anniversary of Dr B.R. Ambedkar. A senior government official, justifies the growing number of holidays when he says, “Uttar Pradesh is a multi-religious and multi cultural state and the government has to take care of all sections of society (read vote banks). For example, till a few years ago, ‘Ganesh Utsav’ in UP used to be a low key affair but with the growing influence of Maharashtra, it is now being celebrated on a much larger scale and this year, we have received demands and requests from various organisations asking for extended holidays during the Ganpati festival.”
A retired bureaucrat, meanwhile, says that with an increasing number of holidays, the work culture in UP has deteriorated further.