The United Forum of Bank Unions (UFBU) has announced a nationwide strike on March 24 and 25, demanding a five-day workweek for the banking sector, increased recruitment across all levels, and the regularisation of temporary employees. Amidst this, a viral social media post (here and here) featuring graphics from the Sakshi Post media outlet claims that starting from April 2025, banks across the country will operate only five days a week, from Monday to Friday, as per a new regulation issued by the Reserve Bank of India (RBI). The post further states that Saturdays and Sundays have been officially declared as bank holidays. Let’s verify the claim made in the post through this article.
Claim: Starting from April 2025, banks across the country will function only five days a week.
Fact: The Reserve Bank of India has not issued any circular enforcing a five-day workweek for banks from April 2025. No such circular is available on RBI’s official website. The Union government’s nodal agency, PIB Fact Check, also debunked the claim as fake. Hence, the claim made in the post is FALSE.
To verify whether Sakshi Post published this article or if it was edited, we conducted a Google keyword search and found that Sakshi Post did publish the article on 18 March 2025, stating that the RBI had modified bank working hours, making banks operational five days a week with Saturdays and Sundays off.
To further verify, we reviewed the official website of the Reserve Bank of India but found no circular stating that, from April 2025, banks across the country will operate five days a week, from Monday to Friday, as per a new RBI regulation. We also reviewed RBI’s social media handles (here, and here) but found no such announcement.
During our investigation, we found an X post dated 20 March 2025 by the Press Information Bureau’s (PIB) Fact Check unit, a nodal agency of the Union government, which debunked the claim as fake news. The official PIB Fact Check X account tweeted, “A news report by Lokmat Times claims that starting from April, banks across the country would operate five days a week following a new regulation issued by RBI.”
On 05 December 2023, a question was raised regarding the five-day work plan in nationalised banks. In response, Minister of State for Finance Bhagwat Karad stated that the Indian Banks Association (IBA) had submitted a proposal to declare all Saturdays as holidays.
The finance ministry’s reply did not indicate whether the demand has been accepted or whether it could be accepted anytime in the near future.
Factly previously debunked a similar claim when it went viral in December 2023, stating that the Cabinet had approved a five-day workweek for banks from 01 January 2024.
To sum up, based on the available information, as of 21 March 2025, the RBI has not announced any decision to implement a five-day workweek for banks.
