The thing is, companies have been getting away with it. Previous elections saw employers—shops, IT companies, even malls—fail to give employees the paid time off required to vote. The consequence? People lose their right to franchise.
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Well, not this time.
The Maharashtra Government dropped the hammer with a Government Resolution (GR) on Friday: December 2, 2025, is a mandatory paid holiday for anyone who is a voter in the polling areas.
The Mandate is Wide and Specific
This is the key point. The holiday directive applies to all workers, employees, and officers who are voters. And then the instruction follows: it doesn’t matter if your workplace is inside the constituency or miles away in another city. If your name is on the list for that polling area, you get the paid leave.
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Who Must Comply: Every establishment under the Labour Department has to fall in line. Factories, shops, hotels, IT companies—they’re all listed.
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The Essential Services Clause: For places like hospitals or continuous services where a full holiday is not feasible, the GR mandates a minimum of two to three hours of special paid leave. No excuses.
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The Threat: Failure to grant this paid time off? The government is warning that action will be taken if they receive complaints.
This push is for the first phase of the long-delayed local body polls: 246 municipal councils and 42 nagar panchayats are going to the ballot box on December 2. The next phases—covering 29 municipal corporations, including Mumbai—are still TBD. They want this first round to be clean.
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