If you have gone to any government office you must have seen a white towel placed on the chair of a senior official there. White towels are also kept behind the car seats of government officials. Have you ever wondered why this happens? After all, why not put red, blue, yellow and green towels on the chair? What is the reason for using a white towel? Learn about it here…

Why is there a white towel on the chair of government employees?
If you have gone to any government office in India, you must have seen that there is a bright white towel placed on the back of the chair in the officers’ cabin. Often no one sits on the chair, and the compartment also remains empty, but the towel is kept there.

How did this tradition start?
According to some reports, the origin of placing a white towel on a chair is linked to the British Raj. Former government employee Gurdeep Singh Sabal described the white towel as a legacy of the British era. Gurdeep Singh served as acting aide to the country’s former Vice President Hamid Ansari.

There is another subtle principle behind placing a white towel on the chair. This theory is by author Dharma Adhikari. According to him, the British started the practice of keeping a towel on the chair to protect the sheet or cover already placed on the chair from getting dirty with oil due to the habit of Indian people of applying oil to their hair.

1,000 white towels were changed at a government office in UP
There are about a thousand white towels installed at the UP government head office, which are changed twice a week. Instagram account named prabhjot.speaks According to a video shared on Twitter, an emergency meeting was held in Uttar Pradesh in 2024. This meeting was called by Chief Secretary Manoj Kumar Singh. In this he ordered that it will be mandatory to keep a white towel on the chair of MLA, MP and MLC. Now the question arises why only white towel?

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