Principal employer registration now runs through section 3 of the Occupational Safety, Health and Working Conditions Code, 2020, in force since 21 November 2025: the employer of any establishment with ten or more workers registers it electronically within sixty days, a registration already held under the old Act is treated as registered under the Code, and an unregistered establishment cannot employ anyone. Your labour contractor brings you a form to sign and you sign it, because it is his licence and his paperwork. Under the Contract Labour Act, 1970, principal employer registration was the half that ran the other way: a duty on you, the person running the site, and Section 9 said that until it was done you could not lawfully employ contract labour at all. The Code keeps the duty and widens the bar. Most owners discover this order of events backwards, after an inspection.

What changed on 21 November 2025: registration under the OSH Code

The Contract Labour (Regulation and Abolition) Act, 1970 was repealed by section 143(1)(h) of the Occupational Safety, Health and Working Conditions Code, 2020, which came into force on 21 November 2025. The same section repealed the building workers and inter-state migrant workmen Acts, whose registrations are covered in BOCW registration and the inter-state migrant workmen licence. In their place the Code has one registration of the establishment, under section 3, made by its employer. The Code defines an employer as a person who employs workers “whether directly or through any person”, so a site run entirely on contract labour is not outside it.

Point 1970 Act (repealed) OSH Code 2020
When registration applies 20 or more workmen employed as contract labour on any day of the preceding twelve months (Section 1(4)) An establishment in which ten or more workers are employed, building and other construction work included (Section 2(1)(v)); the contract labour chapter applies separately at fifty contract labour (Section 45)
Who applies The principal employer (Section 7) The employer of the establishment (Section 3(1)); the principal employer is defined by the same four kinds of establishment (Section 2(1)(zz))
Deadline The period the appropriate Government fixed (Section 7(1)) Within sixty days of the Code applying to the establishment, later only with a late fee (Section 3(1))
Form and certificate Set by each state’s rules Central Rules: Form I on the Shram Suvidha portal; a Form III certificate within seven days of a complete application, or deemed issued (rule 3)
Registration already held Not applicable Deemed registered under the Code once its details are given to the registering officer (Section 3(8)); Central Rules: update in Form I within six months (rule 3(6))
Running without it No contract labour at all (Section 9) No employee at all (Section 3(7))
Penalty Up to three months’ imprisonment, a fine up to ₹1,000, or both (Section 23) General penalty of ₹2 lakh to ₹3 lakh, plus up to ₹2,000 a day if it continues after conviction (Section 94)
Contractor fails to pay wages Principal employer pays, then recovers (Section 21) Principal employer pays in full or the unpaid balance, then recovers from the contractor (Section 55(3))

Two cautions before you act on that table. The Occupational Safety, Health and Working Conditions (Central) Rules, 2026, G.S.R. 345(E) of 8 May 2026, apply where the Central Government is the appropriate government: central government establishments, railways and metro railways, mines, major ports, central public sector undertakings and their contractors, among others. For those establishments the six months in rule 3(6) run from the rules coming into force on publication, and the notification is dated 8 May 2026, so an existing registration has to be updated in Form I by around early November 2026. Work for a state department or a private client falls under the state’s own rules, and the states are notifying theirs on their own timetable. Until a state’s new rules replace its old ones, section 143(3) keeps the old rules in force to the extent they do not contradict the Code, and the government said at commencement that existing rules would continue during the transition. Ask your state labour office which form it is using before you file.

The rest of this article explains how the 1970 Act’s registration worked. It still matters for certificates issued under that Act, which carry into the Code under section 3(8), and in states still running the old forms.

Two registrations, pointing in opposite directions

The Contract Labour (Regulation and Abolition) Act, 1970 sets up two separate permissions, and they belong to two different people.

Chapter III registers the establishment, and that duty falls on the principal employer. Chapter IV licenses the contractor, and that duty falls on the contractor. The labour licence for contractors works through the second one in detail, including the Form V certificate the 1970 Act made you sign before your contractor’s application was even complete, and what replaced it.

The two are easy to confuse because both get called “the labour registration” on site. They are not interchangeable, and holding one does nothing for the other. A contractor with a valid licence working on an unregistered establishment is a problem for the owner, not for him.

Whether the Act applies to you at all

The Code draws the registration line at ten workers in the establishment and applies its contract labour chapter separately at fifty contract labour. The 1970 Act drew a single line at twenty, and this is how it worked.

Section 1(4) draws the line by headcount, and it draws it twice.

It applies to every establishment in which twenty or more workmen are employed, or were employed on any day of the preceding twelve months, as contract labour. Separately, it applies to every contractor who employs, or employed on any day of the preceding twelve months, twenty or more workmen.

Read the words “on any day of the preceding twelve months” slowly, because they do the real work. The test is not your headcount today. A site that ran a forty-man gang for three weeks during a slab pour, and has eight men on it now, is inside the Act. Owners who check their current muster and conclude they are outside have checked the wrong thing.

The proviso lets the appropriate Government apply the Act to establishments or contractors below twenty by notification, after at least two months’ notice. So twenty is the central floor, not a guarantee, and your state may sit lower.

Why the principal employer is usually you

Section 2(g) does not define the principal employer by title or by who signs the cheques. It defines it by the kind of establishment.

Kind of establishment Who the Act treats as principal employer
Government office or department, or a local authority The head of that office or department, or an officer specified for the purpose
Factory The owner or occupier; where a manager is named under the Factories Act, 1948, that named person
Mine The owner or agent; where a manager is named, that named person
Any other establishment Any person responsible for the supervision and control of the establishment

A construction site, a crusher yard, a machine-hire operation working on someone else’s project — none of these is a factory or a mine, so the fourth row is the one that catches them. And the fourth row does not name an owner. It names whoever is responsible for supervision and control.

That has a consequence worth sitting with. If you hold the work order, run the site and direct the gang, you are the principal employer whether or not anyone has ever used that phrase to you, and whether or not your own name appears on a single labour record.

Section 2(e) casts the net just as wide on the other side: an establishment means any office or department of the Government or a local authority, or any place where any industry, trade, business, manufacture or occupation is carried on.

What principal employer registration actually requires

Under the Code the application is made electronically under section 3, and under the Central Rules it is Form I on the Shram Suvidha portal, answered with a Form III certificate. The 1970 Act’s mechanics below still explain the certificates issued under it.

The mechanics are short, which is part of why they get skipped.

Section 6 lets the appropriate Government appoint Gazetted Officers as registering officers and define the limits within which each one operates. Section 7(1) then requires every principal employer of a covered establishment to apply to the registering officer, in the prescribed manner, for registration of the establishment, within the period the Government fixes by notification. There is a proviso for a late application: the registering officer may entertain one after the period expires if satisfied that the applicant was prevented by sufficient cause from applying in time.

Section 7(2) closes the loop. Where the application is complete in all respects, the registering officer shall register the establishment and issue a certificate of registration containing the prescribed particulars.

The form itself, the fee and the filing window are prescribed by the rules your state has made under the Act, not by the Act, which is why a number quoted by a contractor in another state is worth nothing to you.

Section 9, and why it is not a fine

Most compliance rules are priced. You skip them, you pay a penalty, you carry on. Section 9 is built differently.

Section 3(7) of the Code keeps that design and widens it: an employer whose establishment is not registered shall not employ any employee in it, not just contract labour. Where no specific penalty applies, the Code’s general penalty in section 94 is ₹2 lakh to ₹3 lakh, plus up to ₹2,000 a day if the contravention continues after conviction. What follows is how the 1970 Act framed it.

It provides that no principal employer of a covered establishment shall employ contract labour where the establishment was required to be registered under Section 7 but was not registered within the time fixed, or where its registration has been revoked under Section 8. The consequence is not a bill. It is that the arrangement your site is actually running on stops being lawful.

Section 8 supplies the revocation route: a registration obtained by misrepresentation or suppression of any material fact, or one that has become useless or ineffective for any other reason, may be revoked — after the principal employer is given an opportunity to be heard, and with the previous approval of the appropriate Government.

On top of that, Section 23 punishes contravention of any provision prohibiting, restricting or regulating the employment of contract labour with imprisonment up to three months, or a fine up to one thousand rupees, or both, with a further fine up to one hundred rupees for each day a contravention continues after a first conviction. The fine figures are small and old. The imprisonment exposure and the Section 9 shutdown are the parts that matter commercially.

The liabilities that follow the registration

Registration is the entry point to a set of duties that sit on you regardless of what your contract with the labour supplier says.

Section 20 provides that where an amenity required under Sections 16 to 19 is not provided by the contractor within the prescribed time, the principal employer shall provide it within the prescribed time, and may recover the expense from the contractor by deduction from any amount payable under the contract or as a debt. Section 21 makes the contractor responsible for paying wages, and then makes the principal employer the backstop when he does not.

This is the same structure that shows up in PF and ESI for construction workers and in the cess covered in labour cess on construction bills: the law reaches past the contractor to the person with the money and the site. If you are on the other side of this relationship and building a labour-supply business, how to become a labour contractor sets out the same statute from the contractor’s end.

Check your own registration before your contractor’s licence

Under the Code, check three things. Whether ten or more workers are employed in the establishment, remembering that the Code’s employer employs them “directly or through any person”. Whether it already holds a registration under the 1970 Act or another central labour law, in which case you give the registering officer those details rather than registering afresh. And which forms your state labour office is now using.

If twenty or more workmen have been on your site as contract labour on any day in the last twelve months, the registration duty is yours and it came first. Check whether your establishment holds a certificate of registration under Section 7 before you check anything about your contractor’s licence, because the order matters and Section 9 attaches to the gap.

The practical step is to call your state’s registering officer, ask which form and what period applies, and get the certificate on file. The same site discipline that keeps this paperwork current is what keeps a bid credible when you go after bigger work, and live government tenders and contract opportunities are where that credibility gets paid for.

Rates, schemes, statutory thresholds and state rules change — confirm current terms with your labour law adviser or the office of the registering officer before deciding. Prices, specifications and features are indicative, vary by variant, location and date, and should always be confirmed with the official OEM or authorised dealer before any purchase decision. DesiMachines is not liable for decisions taken on the basis of information that may have changed after publication.