What Is the OSH Code 2020, and Does It Apply?

The OSH Code, 2020 is Act 37 of 2020, and it consolidates thirteen central laws on safety, health and working conditions into one statute of 143 sections. It governs four things, and an employer meets them in a different order than the Act sets them out: getting registered, documenting who works for you, keeping the workplace and the hours lawful, and the extra duties that attach to particular kinds of work. It is in force: it commenced on 21 November 2025 by S.O. 5321(E), a single notification for the whole Code, and the OSH (Central) Rules, 2026 followed on 8 May 2026 as G.S.R. 345(E). Each Code's commencement date is the same for all four, and the thirteen Acts this one replaced were repealed on commencement.

The OSH commencement provision differs from those in the other three Codes. S.O. 5321(E) was made under sub-section (2) of section 1, not sub-section (3), and section 143(1) then says the thirteen Acts stand repealed from the date that notification appoints. The repeal is therefore self-executing here, and needed no separate instrument.

Which chapter answers your question matters more than the section number, because the Code contains separate provisions on the same subject for different kinds of establishment.

The duties are subject to the exemption powers in section 127. Section 127(1) lets the appropriate Government direct by notification that any provision of the Code shall not apply to an establishment or a class of establishments, and section 127(2) lets a State exempt a new factory to create economic activity and employment. No notification under either has been located in the Central sphere, so each duty stands by default rather than because no power exists to lift it. The power belongs to the appropriate Government, which for most private establishments is the State. Check your own State's notifications before treating any duty as incapable of exemption, and note that a Factories Act exemption a State made before commencement is preserved by the proviso to section 127(2) for its remaining period.

Unless labelled otherwise, references are to the Central Rules. The Central Rules bind an establishment for which the Central Government is the appropriate Government, and section 2(1)(d)(ii) puts a factory, a motor transport undertaking, a plantation, a newspaper establishment and a beedi and cigar establishment with the State where it stands, "including the establishments not specified in clause (i)". That closing phrase is the one that matters to an ordinary firm: an establishment that is none of the named kinds and not on the Central list falls to its State by default. An Explanation then confirms that occupational safety in a factory is the State's. Where a State has notified nothing, section 143(3) continues what was validly done under a repealed Act. Assess these duties separately from those imposed by the other three Labour Codes.

The Code applies to an establishment with ten or more workers, and to a mine, a port or the vicinity of a port where dock work is carried out whatever its size. Nine separate applicability tests then determine which chapter applies. Only three of them are the familiar ten, and one of them counts nothing at all. So which establishments are covered under the OSH Code 2020 is not always a question about ten workers, and it is never only that. An employer who answers "we have twelve people, so everything applies" has skipped eight questions.

Section 1(3) provides three exclusions irrespective of headcount, with a proviso qualifying one of them. Section 1(3) puts the offices of the Central Government, the offices of a State Government and any ship of war of any nationality outside it. Its proviso provides an exception for one class: the Code does apply to contract labour employed through a contractor in a Central or State Government office where that Government is the principal employer. So a Government department engaging contract labour is covered by the Code for those workers.

The factory definition has exclusions of its own. Section 2(1)(w) does not include a mobile unit belonging to the armed forces of the Union, a railways running shed, or a hotel, restaurant or eating place.

The first proviso to section 2(1)(v) would lower the ten where the Central Government notifies a hazardous or life-threatening activity, and it applies to sub-clauses (i) and (ii) only. No such notification has been made, so do not write that a hazardous establishment is covered from the first worker. A second proviso then works the other way for registration: notwithstanding the factory threshold in clause (w), an establishment in sub-clause (i), (ii) or (iii) is an establishment for the purposes of Chapter II once ten or more are employed. Note the word it uses: the sub-clauses count workers and this proviso counts employees, which is the wider set, so the registration test can attach where the sub-clause itself would not.

Count workers rather than employees, because the Code uses both words and they are not the same set. Section 2(1)(zzl) defines "worker" and takes four classes out of it: a member of the armed forces; a person in the police service or a prison officer; a person employed mainly in a managerial or administrative capacity; and a person employed in a supervisory capacity drawing more than ₹18,000 a month or such amount as the Central Government notifies. Nothing has been notified, so ₹18,000 stands. The wage condition has a specific scope: the managerial exclusion has no pay test at all, and only the supervisory one does. And the definition expressly includes a working journalist and a sales promotion employee. Worker and employee are defined separately in each Code, so the word that applies is read Code by Code.

Explanation II to section 2(1)(w) expressly excludes one common software-firm situation: an electronic data processing unit or a computer unit is not a factory where no manufacturing process is carried on. Ritu runs HR at a 140-person Pune software firm: 118 workers, and 22 managers and supervisors paid above ₹18,000 a month. All 140 are employees and must receive an appointment letter under section 6(1)(f). Only the 118 count towards the ten, towards the 500 for a Safety Committee, and towards the safety-officer thresholds. Her firm is covered by the Code and does not meet any of the higher thresholds.

Register, yes. Who needs to register under the OSH Code is settled by the establishment applicability tests, and a contractor licence is a separate question that turns on what work is done rather than on your headcount. Section 3(1) requires every employer of an establishment that comes into existence after commencement, and to which the Code applies, to apply electronically to the registering officer within sixty days from the date the Code becomes applicable to it. The sixty days are statutory, so they run whether or not your State has prescribed the form and the fee.

Different sub-sections of section 3 allocate powers to different Governments. Your appropriate Government appoints the registering officer and prescribes the application form, its particulars and the fee. The Central Government prescribes the certificate of registration and the time for issuing it, the form for intimating a change of ownership, management or particulars within thirty days, and the manner of informing a closure within thirty days with a certificate that all dues are paid. Those three bind a State-sphere establishment as much as a Central-sphere one.

Registration is not a formality you can defer, because section 3(7) turns it into a prohibition in the Code itself: an employer who has not registered, and who has not appealed a cancellation or revocation or whose appeal has been dismissed, shall not employ any employee in the establishment. That is a section rather than a rule, so it binds in every sphere.

Two provisos protect the employer and are rarely reported. Where the registering officer fails to register the establishment or to entertain the application within the prescribed period, the establishment is deemed registered, the certificate is auto-generated, and the officer is responsible for the failure. The same happens on a closure: if the officer does not cancel within sixty days, the certificate is deemed cancelled.

Section 3(1) is conjunctive: it applies to an establishment that comes into existence after commencement and to which the Code applies. An establishment that existed before 21 November 2025 and was never registered under a Central labour law falls in neither that provision nor section 3(8)'s deeming, and section 3(7) bars an unregistered employer from employing anyone.

An establishment already registered under another Central labour law does not register again. Section 3(8) deems it registered under this Code, subject to the condition that it provides the details of its registration to the registering officer in the prescribed time and form. Rule 3(6) of the Central Rules is what discharges that condition in the Central sphere: six months from 8 May 2026 to update the registration particulars in Form I, which ends on 8 November 2026. A State-sphere employer owes the same condition and takes its period from its own State's rules. Six States have final OSH rules to take it from: Andhra Pradesh, Arunachal Pradesh, Bihar, Gujarat, Ladakh and Rajasthan. Elsewhere no State period has been notified.

Licensing is Chapter XI and it belongs to the contractor, not to you. Part I of that Chapter applies where fifty or more contract labour are employed on any day of the preceding twelve months, under section 45(1), and section 47 puts the licence on the contractor. Fifty is the threshold that makes the Part applicable; it is not a licensing threshold on the principal employer.

One prohibition overrides all of that and is easy to miss. Section 57(1) provides that, notwithstanding anything in the Part, the employment of contract labour in the core activities of any establishment is prohibited. A proviso lets the principal employer engage contract labour in a core activity in stated circumstances, and section 57(2) is where the designated authority comes in: it advises the appropriate Government on whether an activity is a core activity, and reports to that Government, which decides the question. That is the authority S.O. 2483(E) of 13 May 2026 constitutes. Section 45(2) excludes an establishment where only work of an intermittent or casual nature is performed, and its Explanation limits most of that exclusion: work is not of an intermittent nature if it was performed for more than 120 days in the preceding twelve months, or, if seasonal, for more than 60 days in a year, and the appropriate Government decides the question finally. The applicable OSH registration and licensing forms, fees and security deposit depend on the relevant sphere and threshold.

Every employee of an establishment to which the Code applies. An appointment letter is mandatory under the new labour codes, and it does apply to existing employees as well as to new ones, and the deadline for the people already on your payroll was 21 February 2026. Section 6(1)(f) requires the employer to issue a letter of appointment to every employee on appointment, in the form the appropriate Government prescribes, and it adds that where an employee had not been issued one on or before the commencement of the Code, "he shall, within three months of such commencement, be issued such appointment letter". Three months from 21 November 2025 ran out on 21 February 2026. That window has closed, and a letter issued now is late rather than optional.

Note the word the section uses. The duty runs to every employee, which is the wider of the Code's two words, so Ritu's 22 managers and supervisors need letters even though none of them counts towards a single headcount test above. It is the one duty on which the worker-versus-employee distinction cuts the other way.

Rule 6 of the Central Rules does two further things for the Central sphere. It prescribes a sixteen-field format for the letter. And it turns the duty into a prohibition: no employee may be employed in an establishment unless an appointment letter has been issued. That prohibition is a Central rule and not a section, so a State-sphere employer is bound by the section 6(1)(f) duty and takes the format, and the prohibition, from its own State once that State notifies. The form itself is prescribed under section 133(2)(g) by the appropriate Government.

Section 6(1) sets out eight duties in all, and the letter is one. The others include maintaining a workplace free from hazards that cause or are likely to cause injury or occupational disease, complying with the occupational safety and health standards declared under section 18, and providing a free annual health examination or test to the classes of employee the rules prescribe. Two of those need a word of caution. No standards have been declared under section 18. But section 6(1)(b) does not stop there: it requires compliance with those standards "or the rules, regulations, bye-laws or orders made under this Code", and that second clause applies today. And the annual health examination is confined by rule 5(1) of the Central Rules to dock work and building or other construction work, for employees aged forty and above, so an office does not owe it. Mines are governed separately: the second proviso to rule 5(2) makes them subject to rule 109, which requires an initial examination on seeking employment and an annual one thereafter, at any age.

One of the eight is itself confined: section 6(1)(h) applies to a factory, a mine, dock work, building or other construction work or a plantation only, so it is not a duty every establishment owes. Section 6(2) then adds a further set of duties under the same chapeau, which puts an office outside those as well.

Two separate duties apply to that question, with two different five hundreds, and the Code and the Rules differ on which duty is compulsory. A Safety Committee is needed at five hundred workers in the Central sphere; a safety officer is needed on the thresholds in the section.

How many safety officers are required for 5000 employees depends on which kind of establishment it is. A mine needs one for every 500 workers under rule 20, so 5,000 there need ten. Rule 18 sets scales for dock work and for building and other construction work, which at 5,000 give three and four respectively. For a factory the Code requires the appointment at 500 and the Central Rules prescribe no scale, because that rule is the State's to make. Safety officers are section 22(2), and the section itself requires them: in a factory with 500 or more workers ordinarily employed, in a factory carrying on a hazardous process with 250 or more, in building or other construction work with 250 or more, and in a mine with 100 or more. The Central Rules then prescribe the qualifications, duties and scales for dock work at 500 and above, for building and other construction work at 250 and above, and for mines at 100 and above with one officer for every 500 workers. There is no factory safety-officer rule in the Central set, and that is an allocation rather than an oversight: section 133(2)(o) puts the qualifications, duties and number of safety officers with the appropriate Government, and the Explanation to section 2(1)(d) makes the State that Government for occupational safety in a factory. So the rule for a factory is the State's to make, and until it does, section 143(3) keeps the State's existing safety-officer rules in force.

The Safety Committee requirements differ. Section 22(1) is discretionary: the appropriate Government may, by general or special order, require an establishment to constitute one. Rule 14(1) of the Central Rules is not: "Every establishment employing five hundred or more workers shall constitute a Safety Committee consisting of representatives of employers and workers." So in the Central sphere the committee is owed at 500 with no order made, and the reader who waits for an order waits for something the rule does not require. Rule 14(2) lets the Central Government vary the threshold by class, rule 14(3) fixes a three-year tenure with quarterly meetings and monthly meetings in a mine, and rule 14(5) gives the employer fifteen days from receiving the committee's recommendations to act.

Do not run the two five hundreds together. Section 22(2)(a)'s five hundred is workers ordinarily employed in a factory and produces a safety officer. Rule 14(1)'s five hundred is workers in any establishment in the Central sphere and produces a committee. Ritu's 118 workers are below both.

The records, health examinations and accident notices required by the OSH Code consist of five registers, a wage slip, a return filed twice over, and a health-examination duty with limited applicability.

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There is no separate overtime register. Overtime is a column of Form XV, which is why the register is titled the way it is. The return is two forms rather than one, which is the most common slip in a first filing, and rule 74 requires Form XVII to be sent to the Inspector-cum-Facilitator as well as uploaded. Rule 72(3) gives relief the other way: registers and wage slips maintained under the Code on Wages are treated as satisfying these rules, so one set can serve both.

A notifiable accident, a dangerous occurrence and a notifiable disease are a separate obligation with their own reporting procedures, and the Third Schedule lists the diseases a medical practitioner and an employer must report. Where a notification is required, the employer reports to the authority the appropriate Government specifies, so the reporting procedure depends on the State in the State sphere.

Who is an inter-State migrant worker under the OSH Code is settled by section 2(1)(zf), and what an employer owes them is Part II of Chapter XI, which attaches at ten or more such workers in the preceding twelve months under section 59.

Part II attaches to the establishment and not to the individual, so a single migrant worker triggers nothing. Bhaskar is a fitter recruited in Odisha for a Chennai plant on ₹17,500 a month, which puts him inside the definition, and his employer owes the Part's duties only because it employs ten or more such workers. Section 2(1)(zf) sets the ceiling at ₹18,000 a month or such higher amount as the Central Government notifies, and nothing has been notified, so ₹18,000 stands. At ₹19,000 he would fall outside the definition and his employer would owe him none of the duties in this section. That ₹19,000 is worth separating from another figure of the same size: S.O. 2492(E) of 13 May 2026 notified ₹19,000 as the ceiling for an audio-visual worker under section 2(1)(f), and the two thresholds have nothing to do with each other.

Three duties follow, and one thing does not. Section 61 gives the worker a journey allowance, and prescribes the rate to the appropriate Government. Rule 102 does that for the Central sphere, and it sets a minimum rather than a maximum: not less than a second-class sleeper fare by train, or by bus or any other mode. Three conditions apply: 180 days worked in the concerned establishments in the preceding twelve months, the allowance once in twelve months, and service aggregated across a change of employer under rule 102(2). Section 60(iii) requires the employer to extend to a migrant worker every benefit available to a worker of that establishment, naming the Employees' State Insurance Act, 1948 and the Employees' Provident Funds and Miscellaneous Provisions Act, 1952, both of which the Code on Social Security repealed on the same day the OSH Code commenced. That is equal treatment for workers in the same establishment. Portability between States is section 62(b), which the appropriate Government shall provide by scheme. Section 63 is a power in the Code: the appropriate Government may provide a toll-free helpline. Rule 103 then imposes the duty in the Central sphere, saying a number "shall be provided through general or special order by Director General Labour Welfare Organisation". No number has been notified, so no number is available for display on a noticeboard. Section 62 imposes a different obligation and says the appropriate Government shall make schemes, including the portability scheme, and none has been notified. The study required by Rule 104 has likewise not been completed.

There is no displacement allowance in the OSH Code. That was a feature of the repealed Inter-State Migrant Workmen Act, 1979, and it did not come across. A policy that promises one is promising something the statute does not give.

Whether a 12-hour shift is legal in India under the new labour codes is answered no for an ordinary worker. Eight hours a day is the cap, and it is in the Code rather than in a rule. Section 25(1)(a) allows no worker more than eight hours in a day, so a twelve-hour shift breaches it whatever the week looks like, unless the appropriate Government has exempted the establishment under section 127, and no such exemption has been located in the Central sphere.

Three sub-sections contain “notwithstanding” clauses, and only two affect the cap. Section 25(2) puts a working journalist on a separate regime capped at 144 hours of work in four consecutive weeks with 24 hours of rest in seven days. Section 25(3) opens "notwithstanding anything contained in sub-sections (1) and (2)" and gives a sales promotion employee or a working journalist earned leave, medical leave and encashment on their own footing, so it displaces those sub-sections on leave rather than on the daily cap. Section 25(4) makes an adolescent worker’s hours subject to the Child and Adolescent Labour (Prohibition and Regulation) Act, 1986.

The eight-hour cap is not the line at which overtime starts, and running the two together is the most expensive mistake on this subject. Section 27 requires wages at twice the rate of wages for overtime, computed daily or weekly, whichever is more favourable to the worker, and a proviso makes overtime conditional on the worker's consent. What it does not do is say when overtime begins: that is prescribed, and rule 69(1) of the Central Rules supplies the figure for the Central sphere at more than eight hours in a day for a daily wager and more than forty-eight hours in a week for everyone else. In a State that has prescribed no trigger there is no section 27 entitlement to compute.

Two figures of 144 appear, one in the Code and one in the Central Rules, and they measure different things. Section 25(2) caps a working journalist's hours of work. The proviso to rule 69(4) caps overtime, and on its own words applies to dock work, mines and building or other construction work. An office is outside the second one, so a general "144 hours a quarter" ceiling is not something most employers can rely on.

Two powers in section 25(1)(b) have not been exercised in the Central sphere: no spread-over and no rest interval have been prescribed there for workers generally, and the only rest interval in the Central Rules is rule 65(4), for journalists. A State-sphere employer is not in that position at all, because section 143(3) keeps its State's existing factories rules on rest intervals and spread-over in force until they are replaced, so a roster there can breach a limit that does exist. The same Code sets rest intervals, overtime and leave in provisions of their own.

Yes. Women can work night shifts under the OSH Code with their consent and subject to the conditions the appropriate Government prescribes, and what the employer has to provide comes from those conditions. Section 43 of the OSH Code is the entitlement, and it says "with their consent" without qualifying how that consent is given. Rule 83 of the Central Rules sets the conditions for the Central sphere, and rule 83(a) is what requires the consent to be taken in writing. So the writing requirement is a Central rule and not a section. A State-sphere employer takes its conditions, including that one, from its own State once it notifies, and section 143(3) keeps that State's existing night-work conditions in force meanwhile, so there is no interval in which no conditions apply.

Section 133(2)(zf) makes those conditions a matter for the appropriate Government, so a State's own safeguards apply instead of the Central ones rather than in addition to them. Verify the applicable night-work conditions before arranging the shift.

Three. The latest OSH Code notifications were all made on 13 May 2026, and whether they change anything for employers is a narrower question than their number suggests.

• S.O. 2483(E), under section 57(2)(a), appoints a designated authority of four: the Director General of the Directorate General of Labour Welfare as Chairperson, with representatives of the Chief Labour Commissioner (Central), the Directorate General of Mines Safety, and the Directorate General Factory Advice Service and Labour Institutes. The authority advises, and under section 57(2)(c) the decision remains with the Government.
• S.O. 2484(E), under section 34(5), appoints the Director General of Mines Safety at Dhanbad as Chief Inspector-cum-Facilitator of Mines for all territories to which the Code extends, with effect from publication and until further orders. It supersedes S.O. 4013(E) of 19 September 2024, except as respects things done or omitted before the supersession.
• S.O. 2492(E), under section 2(1)(f), notifies ₹19,000 a month, or the equivalent where the remuneration is a lump sum, as the ceiling for an audio-visual worker. Above it a person on an audio-visual production stops being an audio-visual worker and falls outside Part III of Chapter XI. Section 2(1)(f) sets no figure of its own, so the definition had no operative ceiling until this notification supplied one, and it is the first made under that clause.

Neither S.O. 2483(E) nor S.O. 2492(E) states a date of effect.

What those three leave untouched matters as much as what they do. No appointment has been made under section 34(1) in the Central sphere, the general power to appoint Inspectors-cum-Facilitators, so the mines order is the only one of its kind there. No inspection scheme has been notified under section 34(3) in the Central sphere either, and rule 77(1) of the Central Rules nonetheless refers to "the inspection scheme under the Code" as though one existed. And the three separate ₹18,000 figures in sections 2(1)(zf), 2(1)(zze)(i) and 2(1)(zzl)(iv) are all still ₹18,000, because nothing has been notified for any of them.

None of that means nobody can inspect you. Section 143(2) deems every Chief Inspector, Additional Chief Inspector, Joint Chief Inspector, Deputy Chief Inspector, Inspector and other officer appointed under any of the repealed enactments to have been appointed under this Code "for such purposes under this Code", so the carry-over is tied to the purposes the officer already held. The factory inspector who called last year holds office under the OSH Code now. What is missing is a fresh appointment and a scheme, not an inspectorate.

Section 34 does not impose an advisory duty. It creates the office and requires the officer to conduct the inspections the scheme specifies, and it says nothing about advising anybody. The nearest thing is section 35(1)(v), which lets the officer supply information and sensitise employers and workers about the Code, and which is one of fourteen powers in a section that also carries entry, search, seizure, sampling, photography and videography.

Section 94 is the general penalty and it is the residual one: it opens "save as otherwise expressly provided", runs from not less than ₹2,00,000 to ₹3,00,000, and adds up to ₹2,000 for each day a contravention continues after conviction. Most named defaults are cheaper and sit elsewhere, so routing every breach to section 94 overstates the exposure.

Imprisonment exists, so the common belief that this Code carries only money is wrong. Sections 95(1) and 98(1) carry up to three months from a first conviction. What the Code does not carry anywhere is a minimum term: every imprisonment provision reads "may extend to". The minimums in this Code are all in money.

The way out is section 110. The Code itself uses neither phrase, but rule 78 of the Central Rules does: after an inspection the Inspector-cum-Facilitator issues an improvement notice in Form XXV, which is the document a Central-sphere employer actually receives. Section 110(1) requires the Inspector-cum-Facilitator to give the employer an opportunity to comply within thirty days from the date of the notice, and no proceeding is initiated if the employer complies. A single proviso takes it away in two cases, and the Gazette joins them with "and": there is no such opportunity in the case of an accident, and none where a violation of the same nature is repeated within three years. Section 110(2) then allows cognizance only on the Inspector's complaint, within six months of knowledge.

Section 111 overrides section 110 for the penalties under sections 12(3), 94, 96, 97, 99, 106 and 114(3), which is four of the five listed penalty categories, and assigns them to an officer not below the rank of Under Secretary, imposed administratively rather than through a court. No such officer has been notified in the Central sphere. The appeal is sixty days, and non-payment within ninety days carries a fine of ₹25,000 to ₹2,00,000.

Compounding under section 114 takes fifty per cent of the maximum penalty, or seventy-five per cent of the maximum fine for an offence, with a further twenty per cent for defying the order, and section 114(5) bars it where the person was earlier convicted of, or earlier compounded, an offence of the same nature within three years. The list is closed: sections 95 and 98, obstruction and falsification, are outside it. And no compounding officer has been notified for the Central sphere, though rule 182 assumes one, so the procedure exists but no officer has been appointed to administer it.

A transition checklist turns each of these duties into a row with named evidence, and your State's own rules prescribe the applicable forms and authorities.