On my phone so I shall keep my reply short. Only gonna comment on no AL. AL is part of the benefit package and hence there is no such thing as abusement of AL. you're entitled to it as part of your benefits. If he wants to encourage people to nt use their AL, allowing encashment would have the same effect. Average mnc and banks AL is 24+2, which amounts to 10% of a years working days. That means you must take 10% off your renumuation to account for that, amounting about 2.9k a month. Your boss might package it nicely to make it easy to swallow but it's obvious this is a way for him to inflate his pay package to appear more competitive.

I got to say your boss is not simple though, definitely good at packaging stuff in various different ways. Can see why he is the boss of a consulting firm.