(Editor’s note: This story was first published on 17 April 2019, and has been republished from The Quint’s archives in light of the fake message resurfacing.)
CLAIM
A viral message claims that come 1 June, all banks will be closed on Saturdays. The message further states that the Reserve Bank of India has officially approved a five-day working week for banks and that the timings henceforth will be from 9:30 am to 5:30 pm.
The message reads: "Bank will be remain closed on every Saturday from 1st June | RBI has approved 5 days working for Banks. Timing 9:30 am to 5:30 pm."
Predominantly viral on WhatsApp, the message has now also made its way to Facebook.
TRUE OR FALSE?
Since the viral message mentions that the move has been approved by the RBI, The Quint checked the RBI website for latest notifications on the matter.
However, the last notification relating to bank holidays on Saturdays dates back to August 2015, when the Central Bank had approved a bank holiday on second and fourth Saturdays.
The notification read: "All scheduled and non-scheduled banks – public, private, foreign, cooperative, regional rural and local area banks – will observe public holiday on second and fourth Saturdays from September 01, 2015; and will observe full working days on Saturdays other than second and fourth Saturdays (referred to as working Saturdays in the Press Release)."
Apart from this, there has been no notification to this effect in the recent times.
It is to be noted here that in an earlier email communication with the RBI, the central bank had told The Quint that any official notification would be made available to the general public via the RBI's official SMS/email channels or via the central bank's official Twitter handle.
However, the RBI's Twitter handle too has not made any announcement regarding all Saturdays being closed from 1 June onward, as claimed by the viral message. Hence it is safe to say that this message is a hoax.
This is not the first time this message has gone viral. Earlier in 2017, a version of the same message was found doing the rounds.
Fact-checking website BOOM had then busted this claim.
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