Dear Keerthana,
You have stated that in connection with the work of your establishment contract labor have been engaged in different numbers on different dates depending on the requirements on daily wage basis and as per the terms of the contract the contractor has to be paid only for the actual no of days his workmen worked. The terms used in your post viz., 'firm' and 'department' do not indicate the type of the establishment in which such contract labor are engaged such as whether a factory, shop or any other establishment. This gives rise to the presumption that you do not pay for the days they do not work due to weekly off, other holidays or their own absence. In any case, I do hope that the Minimum Wages Act,1948 would be applicable to your establishment as well as the contract labor in addition to the establishment-specific labor law.
Therefore, in my opinion your question can be broken into three parts for the sake of academic purpose though it primarily revolves around only for payment of wages for ' Public Holidays ' which can be national and festival holidays or other holidays declared so by the Government on certain occasions in respect of the contract labor engaged in your establishment through a third party viz., the contractor.
The first part is pertaining to the weekly off or holiday and the wages for it. Consecutive six days of work entitles the employee for a weekly day of rest with wages under the provisions of rule 23 of the Minimum Wages ( Central ) Rules, 1950 or any other applicable State Rules framed therein. As per the proviso to this rule, if daily wages are fixed by dividing the month by 26, then no necessity to pay wages for the weekly off.
The second part is about the wages for any national or festival holiday in general. On such days, the contract labor can be either required to work on double wages or on substituted holiday on another day as per their choice OR allowed holiday with wages depending on the statutory eligibility conditions as observed by the above learned member..
Coming to the third part i.e., other public holidays during which the establishment is required to be shut down, in my opinion, there is no necessity for payment for that particular holiday as the establishment remain closed.