Indian bank employee unions have recently intensified their long-standing demand for a five-day workweek. In September 2026, the United Forum of Bank Unions (UFBU) launched nationwide protests pushing for this change alongside other key demands. These included updated pension benefits, a return to the Old Pension Scheme, and the resolution of pending wage issues. A planned three-day strike in late September was deferred after the Indian Banks’ Association agreed to discuss these matters.  

Amid this, a gazette notification (here, here & here) purportedly issued by the Ministry of Finance is being shared on social media, claiming that the central government has declared every Saturday as a holiday for all public sector banks with immediate effect. Let’s verify the claim made in the post.

Archived post can be seen here.

Claim: Gazette notification issued by the Finance Ministry declaring every Saturday a holiday for all public sector banks with immediate effect.

Fact: PIB Fact Check confirmed that the Ministry of Finance has issued no such notification. The viral gazette document is AI-generated using OpenAI tools. Hence, the claim made in the post is False.

First, we searched the government’s official e-Gazette portal to see if any such notification was released, but found no record of it. There have also been no official announcements from the Government of India on this matter.

We then examined the viral image of the gazette notification using the OpenAI content detection tool. The results indicated that the document is an AI-generated one created using OpenAI tools.

Furthermore, PIB Fact Check clarified (archived) that the Finance Ministry has not issued any notification declaring every Saturday a holiday for public sector banks, confirming that the circulating document is fake.

To sum it up, the viral gazette notification is fabricated, and the government has not declared all Saturdays as bank holidays.