The short version
If your establishment is already registered under a central labour law, you have until 8 November 2026 to file your registration details under section 3(8).
The OSH Central Rules 2026 bind only establishments where the Central Government is the appropriate Government. A private factory, shop or office is almost certainly in the State sphere.
The fifty-worker threshold governs contractor licensing. It does not govern registration, which starts at ten workers.
Where a State has not notified its rules, the Central Rules do not step in. Your State's saved rules under the repealed Act govern.
Parity of service conditions under the rules does not mean wage parity. Reading it that way would have you repricing a whole contract workforce for no reason.
The Contract Labour (Regulation and Abolition) Act 1970 was repealed on 21 November 2025 by section 143(1)(h) of the Occupational Safety, Health and Working Conditions Code. Contractor licensing now starts at fifty workers instead of twenty, the registers have new numbers, and there is a registration filing with a date on it in November 2026.
Before any of that, one question almost every article on this subject skips.
Whose rules are we talking about
The OSH Central Rules 2026 are made by the Central Government. They bind establishments for which the Central Government is the appropriate Government under section 2(1)(d) of the Code. That means, broadly: establishments carried on by or under the authority of the Central Government, notified controlled industries, railways including metro railways, mines, oil fields, major ports, air transport service, telecommunication service, banking companies, insurance companies established by a Central Act, corporations or authorities established by a Central Act, Central public sector undertakings and their subsidiaries, centrally controlled autonomous bodies, and the establishments of contractors working for any of those.
For a factory, a motor transport undertaking, a plantation, a newspaper establishment, a beedi or cigar establishment, and every establishment not in that list, section 2(1)(d)(ii) makes the concerned State Government the appropriate Government. The Explanation puts it beyond doubt for factories: the State Government is the appropriate Government for occupational
safety, health and working conditions in a factory situated in that State.
If you run a private factory, a shop, an office, a hospital or an IT services company, you are almost certainly in the State sphere and the Central Rules do not bind you.
Read the form numbers and fee figures below as the central-sphere position and as a guide to the shape of what your State is likely to notify, not as your own obligation.
Two details worth knowing
A manpower contractor supplying labour to a Central PSU is in the central sphere for that work, because contractors follow the establishment they serve.
A Central PSU stays in the central sphere even if Central Government equity falls below fifty per cent after the Code commenced.
The filing with a date on it
Section 3(8) is the provision most employers have not read. An establishment that already existed at commencement and was already registered under a central labour law is deemed registered under the Code. You do not re-register. What you do is file your registration details with the registering officer in the prescribed form and time.
The Central Rules put that window at six months. The rules carry a date of 8 May 2026 and we have also seen 9 May cited as the gazette publication date, so the deadline computes to 8 or 9 November 2026. Work to 8 November. There is no benefit in spending the extra day, and we were not able to confirm the gazette date against a gov.in host at the time of writing.
If your establishment came into existence after 21 November 2025 and the Code applies to it, the position is different. Section 3(1) gives you sixty days from the date of applicability to apply electronically. The proviso lets the registering officer entertain a late application on payment of a late fee prescribed by the appropriate Government.
Either way, section 3(7) is the sanction. An employer who has not registered may not employ anyone.
Section 3(1) requires the application to go electronically to the registering officer appointed by the appropriate Government. It does not name a portal. Central-sphere establishments file on Shram Suvidha. If your appropriate Government is a State, check whether that State has designated Shram Suvidha or runs its own before you file anywhere.
What survived the repeal
Section 143(3) deems anything done under the repealed Acts, including rules, notifications, appointments and orders, to have been done under the corresponding provisions of the Code. It stays in force to the extent it is not contrary to the Code, until repealed. Section 143(4) applies section 6 of the General Clauses Act, so accrued liabilities and pending proceedings under the Contract Labour Act did not die with it.
The point most published advice gets wrong
If you are in the State sphere and your State has not yet notified its rules under the Code, the Central Rules do not step in to fill the gap. What governs you is your State's saved Contract Labour rules, read subject to the Code.
Section 119(5) is the other saving worth knowing. A contract labour licence obtained before commencement remains valid for its unexpired period, so you do not re-license mid-term.
The threshold moved, but not for everything
Section 45(1) applies Part I of Chapter XI to establishments employing fifty or more contract labour on any day of the preceding twelve months, and to manpower supply contractors who have employed fifty or more.
The fifty governs contractor licensing and the contract labour chapter. It does not govern registration, which turns on whether you are an establishment at all. Section 2(1)(v)(i) sets that at ten or more workers.
Take an employer with 12 direct employees and 5 contract workers. It is an establishment, so registration is engaged. It is nowhere near fifty contract labour, so contractor licensing and the contract labour welfare and wage provisions do not apply. Whether it registers afresh under section 3(1) or is deemed registered under section 3(8) depends on whether it already held a central labour law registration. That is our reading of the provisions applied to a common fact pattern, not something the Code spells out.
Section 45(2) excludes intermittent or casual work but defines it narrowly. Work is not intermittent if it was performed for more than 120 days in the preceding twelve months, or if seasonal and performed for more than 60 days a year.
The registers
Section 33 requires the register to be maintained in the prescribed form, electronically or otherwise, with the particulars prescribed by the appropriate Government: work performed, normal daily hours, weekly rest day, wages paid and receipts, leave and leave wages, overtime, attendance, dangerous occurrences and employment of adolescents.
The retention period, where registers must be held and what language they must be in are all rule-made, by your appropriate Government. Under the Central Rules the position is a five-year retention from the last entry and availability at or near the workplace.
Form numbers under the OSH Central Rules 2026. Confirm the equivalent in the rules that
Do not use an old-to-new form mapping table
The new schedule reuses Roman numerals for different subjects. A form number that meant one thing under the old Contract Labour rules does not necessarily mean the same thing now. Read each form on its own terms rather than mapping across.
The provision that removes duplication
Where an establishment already maintains registers and wage slips under the Code on Wages rules, those are deemed to satisfy the OSH register and wage slip obligation.
If your payroll system already produces compliant Code on Wages registers, you are not obliged to run a second parallel set. It is one of the few genuinely simplifying provisions in the new regime, and it is worth confirming with your payroll vendor that the registers they generate are the Code on Wages ones.
Contractor licensing
No licence is required below fifty contract workers. Above that, licences run for five years under section 48(3), which is a real change from annual renewal.
Under the Central Rules, security is a bank guarantee at Rs 1,000 per contract worker subject to slab caps, renewal must be applied for between 30 and 90 days before expiry with a 25 per cent surcharge if late, and the contractor must intimate each work order within 15 days.
The provision that lands on you, not the contractor
Section 54 deems engaging contract labour through an unlicensed contractor to be a contravention by the principal employer. Verifying the licence is your job.
Worth noting what has gone. The old licence application required a principal employer certificate in Form V. Nothing in the new central rules requires an equivalent. The link between you and your contractor is now made after the fact, through the contractor's work order intimation and your own annual return.
Welfare, and the two thresholds people miss
Section 53 puts the welfare obligation on you rather than the contractor. The facilities specified in sections 23 and 24 must be provided by the principal employer to contract labour employed in the establishment. Section 53 itself specifies nothing; sections 23 and 24 do the work.
Potable drinking water, separate latrine and urinal accommodation for male, female and transgender employees, washing and bathing facilities, locker rooms, sitting arrangements and first-aid boxes carry no headcount threshold.
Canteen and creche do. A canteen is required under section 24(1)(v) only where one hundred or more workers are ordinarily employed, and that count expressly includes contract labour. So your contract workforce counts towards the trigger even though the facility is your obligation. Creche facilities under section 24(3) arise where more than fifty workers are ordinarily employed, and the proviso lets you use a common or pooled creche rather than building your own.
Section 57 prohibits contract labour in core activities, with limited exceptions.
Parity does not mean pay parity
The Central Rules require parity of holidays, hours of work and other conditions of service where contract labour does the same or similar work as your own employees.
They do not confer wage parity. Wages for contract labour run through the applicable Code on
Wages rates.
This is worth being precise about, because reading the parity rule as a pay obligation would lead an employer to reprice an entire contract workforce against their own salary bands for no reason.
What you owe if the contractor defaults
Section 55(1) requires the contractor to pay wages before the expiry of such period as may be prescribed by the appropriate Government. Section 55(3) makes you liable to pay in full, or the unpaid balance, where the contractor fails to pay within that prescribed period or makes short payment. You then recover from the contractor by deduction or as a debt.
The Code sets no number. The number is entirely rule-made, and the rule is your appropriate Government's. Under the Central Rules the reading is that where the contractor has not paid within seven days of the wage period closing, the principal employer must pay within fifteen days. Check the period prescribed under your own rules before building a payment control around those figures.
A commonly miscited provision
Section 55(4) is sometimes quoted as your right to recover from the contractor's security deposit. It is not. That subsection empowers the appropriate Government to order payment out of the security deposit, which is a different thing from a right you can exercise yourself. Your recovery route sits in the rules.
Two drafting inconsistencies in the Central Rules are worth flagging rather than papering over. One rule reads as though every employer must file Form XVIII annually, when Form XVIII is on its face a contractor half-yearly return. And the instructions to Form XVII say "more than 50 workers" where section 45(1) says "fifty or more", which leaves a contractor with exactly fifty inside the statute but outside the form.
Two things this filing does not do
Filing the EPF and ESI declaration does not discharge your registration with EPFO or ESIC. Those obligations arise under the Social Security Code and are unaffected by OSH registration.
Closure filed under the OSH rules does not close you at EPFO or ESIC either. Do those separately and do not assume one triggers the other.
Where the States have got to
Gujarat is reported to have had final rules under all four labour codes by February 2026. Rajasthan is reported to have notified on 30 June 2026, Bihar on 1 July 2026 and Andhra Pradesh in early August 2026.
Treat all of those as reported dates. We have not confirmed them against each State gazette, and a State that has notified under one Code has not necessarily notified under the OSH Code.
Karnataka, Maharashtra, Tamil Nadu and Delhi had published draft rules but, so far as we could confirm at the time of writing, had not notified final OSH rules. This changes without notice.
Notification dates in this area move faster than secondary summaries update. We have not relied on any third-party tracker for the positions above. Before you act on your State's status, confirm it against your State Labour Department's gazette.
Currency of this article
Law stated as at 21 August 2026. Central Rules detail was read from a published copy but could not be confirmed against an official gazette host, so confirm specific form numbers and fee amounts before relying on them. State notification positions move without notice and should be checked against your own State gazette.
Disclaimer
This article is general information about Indian labour law, not legal or tax advice, and no professional relationship arises from reading it. Applicability depends on your entity, workforce, states of operation and the terms of your contracts. Confirm your position with qualified payroll, tax and legal advisers before acting.
Sources
Statutes
Occupational Safety, Health and Working Conditions Code 2020, sections 2(1)(d), 2(1)(v), 3, 23, 24, 33, 45, 47, 48, 53, 54, 55, 57, 119, 143
General Clauses Act 1897, section 6
RulesOSH (Central) Rules 2026, G.S.R. 345(E) dated 8 May 2026
Notifications
S.O. 5321(E) dated 21 November 2025, commencing the OSH Code