It is true that after 6 days of work, a worker (whether employed permanently or for a temporary period) is entitled to a day of rest. But in the instant case, the worker has not worked for 6 days but was on leave on Saturday. Following that principle, he is not entitled to leave with wages for Sunday.
Now coming to the practical scenario, regular employees are entitled to certain number of leaves of different types, like casual leave, say 12 days per annum, sick leave for 12 days per annum and certain number of privileged leave/ earned leave depending his grade, number of days worked in the preceding year etc. If you follow the Factories Act, any weekly off day or holiday which comes in between two leaves (like that in the example, 26th April or 26th July) should not be counted as leave. This is because leave for the succeeding year is purely based on the number of days physically worked in the current year. At the same time, if you have in addition to earned leave/ privileged leave/ annual leave, any casual leave or sick leave, the same can be as per company policy because as per Factories Act only earned leave is admissible and CL or SL is outside the scope of the Act and is a bonus for the employees.
Now, coming to Shops and Commercial Establishments which are governed by the State Act, there seems to be no such specific mention about how the sandwiched holiday should be treated. Since leaves under this Act are lump sum, like 12 days of CL, 12 days of SL and 12 days of PL, and not based on the actual days present in the office by each employee in the preceding year, there is nothing wrong in taking the entire days including holiday or weekly off day which intervenes the leave days, as leave. A Shops and Com.. Est……Act, as already mentioned, is a state Act and I have put my views based on Kerala Act. The same is the case with Karnataka and Tamil Nadu Act.
Again coming to a practice, most of the firms follow that holiday/ weekly off day coming in between two casual leaves will be counted as weekly off or holiday, as the case may be, and that coming in between PL or sick leaves should be treated as leave.
Justification to the above is that PL is usually taken for a longer period and not for a single day and therefore, the employee may be deprived of the holidays and weekly off days for the reason that he has not been present for these long days. Similarly, if an employee is on sick leave on Saturday and on Monday, it is presumed that he is sick on Sunday also.
Any way, it is always desirable to have a leave policy for the company and communicate it to the employees. If no policy exists, holidays and weekly off should not be clubbed to leaves.
Madhu.T.K