Labour Secretary Vandana Gurnani
The four labour codes have been notified but actual implementation would take at least three more months as the relevant rules have to be pre-published and discussed again with the stakeholders. Additionally, for rolling out social security benefits to about 1 crore gig workers through Direct Benefit Transfers (DBTs), the government has enrolled aggregators and platform owners to expedite their registration.
In the past three months, the number of gig workers registered with the e-Shram portal has swelled from 3.37 lakh in August to about 30 lakh this month.
Pre-published
In an interview to businessline, Labour Secretary Vandana Gurnani said the rules on all four labour codes – the Code of Wages (2019), Industrial Relations Code (2020), Code on Social Security (2020) and Occupational Safety, Health and Working Conditions Code (2020) – would be pre-published.
“The rules have been pre-published in the past as well, comments taken, finalised and kept ready. However, the legal requirement is that since some time has lapsed since they were pre-published, so the process has to be exhausted again. The rules pertaining to all the four labour codes will be pre-published again during the course of next one week or 10 days. Another 45 days will be available for people to give comments and another 45 days or so we would need to finalise them,” Gurnani said, elaborating on the roll-out timeline for the four codes.
The entire process is expected to take at least three months.
“We hope that in the next three months or so this is the process we will be going to follow in the Central domain on labour codes (for implementation),” Gurnani said.
The Labour Ministry is exchanging information with the States in real time, through a common WhatsApp group where suggestions and ideas are being discussed.
Social Security
Extending social security benefits has been a concern with the government as a number of funds have not been adequately disbursed. The construction workers cess, for instance, has existed for the last two decades but the disbursement has been negligible. Gurnani said the government is cognizant of the fact that workers are not able to avail of social security benefits because of issues of registration. She said aggregators have been asked to assist in registration of workers.
“Registration will be through e-Shram. It will be through Aadhaar. In the absence of a mandate, we had not got the entire data. But we had got data for about 25-30 lakh workers. A mandate is going to strengthen that. The aggregators are now mandated to provide this data and register workers through Aadhaar on the e-Shram portal. It would be DBTs. Aadhaar-linked bank accounts will get the benefits,” Gurnani said.
Published on November 27, 2025
