Labour registers for firms reduced to 5 from 56

Enhancing ease of doing business, the government has reduced the number of registers to be maintained under labour laws to 5 from 56 for 58.5 million establishments.

These registers are related to details of employees, their salaries, loans/recoveries, attendance, and others.

This exercise will help establishments save cost and efforts and ensure better compliance with labour laws, the labour ministry said.

Under various Central Labour Acts, there is a requirement of maintenance of registers depending upon the threshold of the number of employees by the establishments in agriculture and non-agriculture sectors, it said.

Going by the Sixth Economic Census of Central Statistical Office conducted during 2013-2014, India has about 58.5 million establishments in agricultural and non-agricultural sectors combined.

About 45.4 million establishments are in non-agricultural sector.

It said that while reviewing the requirement of filing various returns/registers/forms provided under nine Central Labour Acts, it was found that there were several overlapping/redundant fields that could be cut off. An intention notification was issued on November 4, 2016, for reducing the number of registers/data fields to ministries, states, other stakeholders, besides placing it in public domain.

All previous registers envisaged under various Acts/Rules have been omitted and replaced with only five common registers. Such an exercise has reduced the number of data fields in five registers to only 144 from the then 933 fields in 56 registers, it said.

Labour ministry has also undertaken to develop a software for these five common registers. 

After development of software, those will be put on Shram Suvidha Portal for free download with an aim to facilitate maintenance of those registers in a digitised form.

The Labour Laws under which these registers are maintained include The Building and Other Construction Workers (Regulation of Employment and Conditions of Service) Act, 1996 , The Contract Labour (Regulation and Abolition) Act, 1970, The Equal Remuneration Act, 1976 and The Inter-State Migrant Workmen (Regulation of Employment and Conditions of Service) Act, 1979.

These laws also include The Mines Act, 1952, The Minimum Wages Act, 1948, The Payment of Wages Act, 1936, The Sales Promotion Employees (Conditions of Service) Act, 1976 and The Working Journalists and Other Newspaper Employees (Conditions of Service) Act, 1955.