The Government of India simplifies maintenance of registers under various Labour Laws

The Government has simplified the maintenance of Labour registers of about 5.85 crore establishments in agriculture and non- agriculture sectors. These registers are related to details of employees, their salaries, loans/recoveries, attendance etc. This exercise will drastically reduce the number of registers being maintained by these establishments from 56 to only 5 by doing away with overlapping/redundant fields. This will help these establishments to save cost and efforts and ensure better compliance of Labour Laws.

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. As per the Sixth Economic Census of Central Statistical Office conducted during 2013-2014, India has about 5.85 Crore establishments in agricultural and non-agricultural sectors combined. Out of this, 4.54 Crore establishments are in non-agricultural sector. While reviewing the requirement of filing various returns / registers/forms provided under 9 Central Acts, there were several overlapping/ redundant fields that could be rationalized.

An intention notification was issued on 4th November, 2016 for reducing the number of registers/data fields and the same was widely circulated to concerned Ministries / Departments, State Govts., other stakeholders besides placing the same in public domain. In effect, all previous registers envisaged under various Acts / Rules have been omitted and replaced with only 5 common Registers. Such an exercise has reduced number of data fields in 5 registers to only 144 from the then existing 933 fields in 56 registers.

Ministry of Labour & Employment has also simultaneously undertaken to develop a software for these 5 common Registers. After development of the software, the same will be put on the Shram Suvidha Portal of the Ministry of Labour and Employment for free download with an aim to facilitate maintenance of those registers in a digitized form.

The Labour Laws under which these registers are maintained include:

(i) The Building and Other Construction Workers (Regulation of Employment and Conditions of Service) Act, 1996

(ii) The Contract Labour (Regulation and Abolition) Act, 1970

(iii) The Equal Remuneration Act, 1976

(iv) The Inter-State Migrant Workmen (Regulation of Employment and Conditions of Service) Act, 1979

(v) The Mines Act, 1952

(vi) The Minimum Wages Act, 1948

(vii) The Payment of Wages Act, 1936

(viii) The Sales Promotion Employees (Conditions of Service) Act, 1976

(ix) The Working Journalists and Other Newspaper Employees (Conditions of Service) Act, 1955