Government employees across Punjab began a two-day mass casual leave on 21 October 2026, disrupting work at state secretariats, departmental offices, and the Punjab State Power Corporation, in support of a long-standing set of demands around dearness allowance arrears, the Old Pension Scheme, and employment regularisation.
The agitation, called by the Punjab Sanjha Mulazam Manch Committee, directly escalates a protest trajectory that began with a statewide Maha Hartal on 27 August 2026 and a mass leave on 8 September. The committee announced in late August that if the state government did not withdraw show-cause notices issued to employees who struck on 27 August and did not act on their broader demands, it would follow up with a two-day action on 21 and 22 October.
“The employees are still protesting. There are clear High Court directions, but the government is still not taking proper action,” said Sukhbir Singh Badal, SAD president, in a statement supporting the agitated employees.
Core demands include releasing three pending instalments of dearness allowance totalling 18%, implementing the Old Pension Scheme (OPS), regularising contractual employees, including Anganwadi workers, helpers, and mid-day meal workers, and ensuring full pay scale during probation. Partap Singh Bajwa, Leader of the Opposition in the Punjab Vidhan Sabha, said more than 50,000 employees across 52 government departments who are members of the Punjab State Ministerial Staff Union have been on strike for over a month.
“Punjab CM has backstabbed the Punjab Government employees by making false promises with them,” Bajwa said in his statement to the press on Thursday.
The two-day action coincides with the Punjab Vidhan Sabha session on 22 October, with work affected across power supply, revenue collection, treasury operations, education, and health departments. At the Punjab Public Service Commission office in Patiala, employees have been on a parallel pen-down strike since 6 October, and have announced that the protest will continue until 24 October.
Punjab’s agitation is the second major state-level public employee strike India has seen in 2026, after Andhra Pradesh employees began a similar protest in August, pointing to a broader fault line between state governments and their workforce over pension restoration and contract regularisation.
