PIB Fact Check says the viral all-Saturdays bank-holiday Gazette is fake

PIB Fact Check said on 1 October 2026 that a Gazette circulating online is fake. The document is dated 30 September 2026 and is presented as coming from the Finance Ministry's Department of Financial Services. It claims that every Saturday is a public holiday for public sector banks, including the State Bank of India. The fact-check unit says no such notification has been issued. Neutral Politics checked that finding as IANS carried it, and checked Business Standard, the Economic Times and Gujarat Samachar, all dated 1 October 2026 (IST). This note was posted at 4:07 pm IST that afternoon. The fake document is not reproduced here.

IANS carries two sentences from the PIB Fact Check post on X. "The document being circulated is fake." And: "No such notification has been issued by Finance Ministry declaring every Saturday as public holiday for public sector banks." Those are the unit's words, as IANS reported them. The X post is dated 1 October. A clock time for the post itself is not in the source list used here. IANS's report is timed at 1:35 pm IST.

The claim, as these reports describe it, is that one claim: every Saturday off for public sector banks, including SBI, in a Gazette said to be from the Department of Financial Services and dated 30 September 2026. This article does not print the document, its layout, or any further wording from it. Who made it is not known from the reports checked.

The rule those papers describe as actually in force is narrower, and it is not a line in the PIB post as carried here. Business Standard, the Economic Times and Gujarat Samachar report that public sector banks are closed on the second and fourth Saturdays. They date that system to 2015. Other Saturdays are working days unless the Reserve Bank of India's calendar lists a holiday. That is the outlets' account. PIB Fact Check's post, in the words IANS carried, does not itself set out the second-and-fourth Saturday rule. It says the all-Saturdays notification was not issued.

A five-day banking week is a different question. The reports checked call it a demand of bank unions, and something under discussion. They say it has not been approved. A demand that is still being discussed is not a Gazette, and it is not a notification that every Saturday is already a holiday. Whether a five-day week is approved later is not known from these reports.

The day's coverage is timed as follows. IANS is at 1:35 pm IST. Business Standard is at 1:56 pm IST. The Economic Times is at 2:01 pm IST. Gujarat Samachar is dated 1 October, without a clock time in the source list used here. PIB Fact Check's post is dated 1 October.

What's next

The viral Gazette is fake, on the finding PIB Fact Check published and IANS carried. No Finance Ministry notification declaring every Saturday a public-sector bank holiday appears in that check. On the account in Business Standard, the Economic Times and Gujarat Samachar, banks remain closed on the second and fourth Saturdays, a pattern those papers date to 2015, and other Saturdays are working days unless the RBI calendar lists a holiday. A five-day week remains a union demand under discussion, not an approved change.