CHENNAI: Heeding to requests from students, parents, teachers and government employees, the Tamil Nadu government has decided to declare November 1 as a public holiday.

This year, Deepavali falls on October 31, which is a Thursday, which meant officials, teachers, and students have to return that night or the next morning to attend to duty and classes. The day after that, is a weekend.

Citing the inconvenience, parents, teachers and government employees had urged the government to declare November 1 as public holiday, so that the weekend break would be added to the Deepavali holiday.

Accepting the request, the government has declared November 1 as a holiday for all government offices, public sector companies, schools, colleges and other educational institutions.

To ensure that this does not lead to loss of a working day, the government declared the next Saturday, November 9, as a working day.