No one has a fundamental right to a public holiday, says Bombay high court
The Bombay high court said whether to declare a particular day as a public holiday or an optional holiday or no holiday at all is a matter of government policy.
MUMBAI: It is time to reduce public holidays in India rather than increase their numbers, the Bombay high court has observed as it rejected a petition by a resident of Dadra and Nagar Haveli to declare August 2 as a public holiday to commemorate its liberation from the Portuguese in 1954.
“As it is, we have far too many public holidays in this country. Perhaps the time has come to reduce, not increase the number of public holidays. We do not see any substance in the petition. It is rejected,” a bench of justices Gautam Patel and justice Madhav Jamdar said on a petition filed by Kishnabhai Ghutia.
To be sure, the central government, which has a five-day week, has 17 gazetted holidays including three national holidays, and 2 restricted holidays every year.
Lawyers Bhavesh Parmar and Devmani Shukla, appearing for the petitioner, said the union territory administration discontinued the practice of declaring a public holiday on August 2 in 2021 and sought directions to reinstate the holiday.
The lawyers also argued that if August 15 could be a public holiday to mark the nation’s Independence Day, there is no reason why August 2 should not be declared a public holiday for Dadra & Nagar Haveli.
They also referred to an April 15, 2019 order of another bench of the high court which ordered the government to observe ‘Good Friday’ as a public holiday in the union territories of Diu, Daman, Dadra and Nagar Haveli, and not a restricted (optional) holiday.
The high court ruled that the 2019 verdict stands on a different footing.
“That PIL was about the failure to gazette i.e. make compulsory, a public holiday rather than keep it optional. Whether or not to declare a particular day as a public holiday or an optional holiday or no holiday at all is a matter of government policy. There is no legally enforceable right that can be said to have been infringed. Nobody has a fundamental right to a public holiday,” the two-judge bench said.