The inter-state migrant workmen act of 1979 was repealed on 21 November 2025, and its ground is now Part II of Chapter XI of the Occupational Safety, Health and Working Conditions Code, 2020. The Code applies at ten inter-state migrant workers in an establishment, counts workers who came on their own as well as those recruited, has no separate migrant licence and no displacement allowance, and makes the employer pay a lump-sum fare home and back once a year. Under the old Act, a crew arriving from Bihar to a site in Telangana with the labour licence already in the file was still not covered. That Act was a separate law with its own licence, and it bit at five migrant workmen on any single day in the past twelve months. It also put a displacement allowance of half a month’s wages, both journey fares and site accommodation on the contractor’s account, and handed the bill to the principal employer when the contractor did not pay.

What changed on 21 November 2025: migrant workers under the OSH Code

The Inter-State Migrant Workmen Act, 1979 was repealed by section 143(1)(j) of the Occupational Safety, Health and Working Conditions Code, 2020, which came into force on 21 November 2025. The same section repealed the Contract Labour Act, so the two licences this article was written around have both gone. Migrant workers now sit in Part II of Chapter XI of the Code, sections 59 to 65, alongside the contract labour rules in Part I.

Point 1979 Act (repealed) OSH Code 2020
Who counts A person recruited by or through a contractor in one state for an establishment in another (Section 2(1)(e)) A worker recruited directly or through a contractor in one state for an establishment in another, or who came on their own and found work there, with wages up to ₹18,000 a month or a higher notified figure (Section 2(1)(zf))
When it applies Five or more on any day of the preceding twelve months, in the establishment or employed by the contractor (Section 1(4)) Ten or more in the establishment on any day of the preceding twelve months (Section 59)
Contractor’s licence A separate licence to recruit, from the officer where recruitment is made (Section 8) No separate licence; the contract labour licence applies at fifty contract labour and its application states the number of inter-state migrant workers (Sections 45, 47, 48(1) and 119(2))
Establishment Principal employer registers (Section 4) Employer registers once under Section 3, giving its inter-state migrant worker details (Section 3(2))
Displacement allowance Half a month’s wages or ₹75, whichever is higher, at recruitment (Section 14) None
Travel Outward and return fare, with journey days paid as duty (Section 15) A lump-sum fare home and back once a year (Section 61); Central Rules: at least second-class sleeper by train, or bus, after 180 days’ work in the preceding twelve months (rule 102)
Facilities Regular and equal pay, suitable conditions, housing, free medical care, protective clothing, accident reports (Section 16) Suitable conditions, accident reports to both states and the next of kin, every benefit other workers get including ESI and EPF, and the medical check-up (Section 60)
Records Particulars to both states within fifteen days, and a photo pass book (Section 12) A government portal of inter-state migrant workers, with self-registration on Aadhaar (Section 21(2)); Central Rules: the employer files its statistics there (rule 13)
Contractor does not pay Principal employer pays wages and allowances, then recovers (Sections 17 and 18) Where the contract labour Part applies, principal employer pays unpaid wages in full, then recovers (Section 55(3))
Worker’s debt to contractor Extinguished when the employment ends (Section 19) Extinguished when the employment ends (Section 65)
Penalty Up to one year, a fine up to ₹1,000, or both (Section 25) General penalty of ₹2 lakh to ₹3 lakh, plus up to ₹2,000 a day if it continues after conviction (Section 94)

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, such as central public sector undertakings, railways, mines and major ports and the contractors working for them. Work for a state department or a private client falls under the state’s own rules, and states are notifying theirs on their own timetable. Until they do, section 143(3) keeps rules and notifications made under the repealed Acts in force so far as they are not contrary to the Code. Ask the state labour office which forms it is using before you file.

The rest of this article explains how the 1979 Act worked. It still explains licences, pass books and records made under it, and the duties a principal employer will ask you about for work done before the Code.

When the inter-state migrant workmen act applies to you

Today the line is ten inter-state migrant workers in the establishment on any day of the preceding twelve months (section 59 of the Code), with no separate contractor limb. This is how the 1979 Act drew it.

The trigger is written into section 1(4) of the Inter-State Migrant Workmen (Regulation of Employment and Conditions of Service) Act, 1979, and it has two limbs. The Act applies to every establishment in which five or more inter-state migrant workmen are employed, or were employed on any day of the preceding twelve months. It applies separately to every contractor who employs, or employed, five or more such workmen on any day of that same period.

Three details in that wording decide most arguments. The count is of migrant workmen specifically, and the Act says “whether or not in addition to other workmen”, so two hundred local labourers do not dilute five men from another state. The look-back is a full year, which means a crew you brought for one month in the last monsoon still brings you inside. And the contractor’s liability stands on its own limb, so you are not covered by the fact that the principal employer’s establishment is small.

A migrant workman for this purpose is one recruited in one state for employment in an establishment in another. A man who travels on his own and finds work at your gate is not recruited by you across a state line. A man your supervisor or a jamadar went and fetched from his village in another state is.

Two registrations, and only one of them is yours

Now the establishment registers once under section 3 of the Code, giving the details of its inter-state migrant workers, and the only contractor’s licence is the contract labour licence, needed at fifty contract labour. How that licence works under the Code is set out separately. The table below is the 1979 Act’s split.

The same split that runs through contract labour law runs through this Act, and it is where most contractors lose their footing.

Document Whose job Source
Registration of the establishment The principal employer Section 4
Licence to recruit and employ The contractor Section 8
Issued by Licensing officer for the area where the recruitment is made Section 8(1)
Validity The period specified in it, renewable on prescribed fees and conditions Section 9(3)

That distinction has gone. The Code’s definition in section 2(1)(zf) covers a worker recruited in one state for an establishment in another and also one who came on their own and found work there, so long as the wages do not exceed 18,000 rupees a month or a higher figure the Centre notifies. Under the Code, the worker who found work at your gate counts too.

Section 8 is worded around the act of recruiting: no contractor to whom the Act applies may recruit a person in one state for employment in an establishment in another state except under a licence. The licensing officer is the one with jurisdiction over the area where you recruit, not where the site is. That is a practical trap for a contractor sitting in Hyderabad who sends a man to Araria to bring twenty workers, because the licence has to come from the recruiting end.

This licence did not replace the one you already held. If you were engaging contract labour at an establishment, the separate requirement under the Contract Labour Act stood as well, and when a labour licence is actually required sets out that test. The establishment-side registration your client has to hold is explained in what principal employer registration covers.

What you owe the workman beyond his wages

This is the part contractors price wrongly, because it does not look like a wage cost and it is one.

The list is now shorter and different. There is no displacement allowance. The employer, a term the Code defines to include the contractor, pays every inter-state migrant worker a lump sum for the fare home and back once a year (section 61). Under the Central Rules the fare is at least second-class sleeper by train, or bus, and it falls due once the worker has put in 180 days in the preceding twelve months, counting time with a previous employer who did not pay it, on the worker’s own certificate (rule 102). Section 60 then requires suitable conditions of work, a report of any fatal accident or serious injury to both states and the next of kin, and every benefit the establishment’s other workers get, ESI and EPF included, with the medical check-up. The 1979 Act’s list ran as follows.

Section 14 requires a displacement allowance at the time of recruitment, equal to fifty per cent of the monthly wages payable to the workman or seventy-five rupees, whichever is higher. The Act adds that it is not refundable and is in addition to wages. The seventy-five rupee figure is from 1979 and has never been revised, so the fifty per cent formula is the one that operates. On a workman at 18,000 rupees a month, that is 9,000 rupees paid up front, per man, before he has worked a day.

Section 15 adds a journey allowance of not less than the fare from the workman’s place of residence in his own state to the place of work, for the outward journey and the return journey both, and requires wages to be paid for the days spent travelling as if the workman were on duty.

Section 16 then lists duties that read as a site-cost checklist: regular payment of wages, equal pay for equal work irrespective of sex, suitable working conditions having regard to the fact that the workman is in a state not his own, suitable residential accommodation for the period of employment, the prescribed medical facilities free of charge, protective clothing as prescribed, and reporting a fatal accident or serious bodily injury.

Add those together on a crew of thirty and the arithmetic is not marginal. It is one reason the true cost of imported labour sits well above the headline daily rate, and why it is worth comparing against what labour actually costs per day across Indian states before you decide to bring a crew rather than hire locally.

The pass book, and the filing nobody does

A portal replaces both. Under section 21(2) of the Code the Central and State Governments keep a database of inter-state migrant workers, on which a worker can register on self-declaration and Aadhaar, and the Central Rules have the employer file statistics of its inter-state migrant workers there (rule 13). The 1979 Act’s two duties were these.

Section 12 puts two duties on the contractor that are easy to miss and easy for an inspector to check.

The first is a filing in two states. Particulars of every inter-state migrant workman must go to the specified authority in the state from which he was recruited and in the state where he is employed, within fifteen days of recruitment or employment, and any change in those particulars must be notified to both. Contractors who file once, at the employing end, have done half of it.

The second is the pass book. Every such workman gets one, carrying his passport-size photograph and written in Hindi and English, and also in his own language where that is neither. It records the name and place of the establishment, the period of employment, the proposed wage rates and mode of payment, the displacement allowance payable, the return fare payable on expiry of employment, and the deductions made. A pass book issued properly is also the contractor’s own evidence on what was agreed, which is worth more than it costs.

Who pays when the contractor does not

Wages still walk up the chain where the Code’s contract labour Part applies, at fifty or more contract labour: under section 55(3) the principal employer pays any unpaid or short-paid wages in full and recovers them from the contractor by deduction or as a debt. Section 65 carries over the old rule that a migrant worker’s debt to the contractor or principal employer is extinguished when the employment ends. Under the 1979 Act the chain ran like this.

The Act closes the gap the way most Indian labour statutes do, by walking up the chain.

Under section 17 the contractor is responsible for paying wages, and the principal employer must nominate a representative to be present when they are disbursed and to certify the amounts paid. If the contractor fails to pay within the prescribed period or pays short, the principal employer becomes liable for the full amount or the unpaid balance. Under section 18 the same applies to the displacement and journey allowances and the section 16 facilities: if the contractor has not provided them, the principal employer must, and may then recover what he paid by deducting it from sums due to the contractor or as a debt.

Read that from the client’s side and you can see why a serious principal employer asks for the licence before he lets your crew through the gate. His exposure is real, and the cheapest way for him to manage it is to hold your money. The same structure governs provident fund and state insurance on site, set out in when PF and ESI apply to construction workers, and the welfare cess side sits in BOCW registration for construction work.

What it costs to ignore

A contravention of the Code with no specific penalty of its own now falls under section 94: 2 lakh to 3 lakh rupees, and up to 2,000 rupees a day if it continues after conviction. That is the figure that now applies. The 1979 Act’s penalties were these.

Section 25 provides imprisonment up to one year, or a fine up to one thousand rupees, or both, for contravening any provision regulating the employment of inter-state migrant workmen or any condition of a licence, with an additional fine up to one hundred rupees for every day a contravention continues after a first conviction. A separate provision carries up to two years or two thousand rupees for obstructing an inspector.

Those 1979 figures were never revised before the Act was repealed, which told you something honest about where the real risk sat. It is not the fine. It is the principal employer’s right to recover allowances from your running bill, the possibility of the licence being revoked under section 10, and the position you are left in if a workman is injured on a site where you were operating without the licence the Act required. None of those has a thousand-rupee ceiling.

When must you licence workmen from another state?

Since 21 November 2025 there is no separate licence for workers from another state. Register the establishment under section 3 with its migrant worker details, hold the contract labour licence if you engage fifty or more contract labour, and budget a fare home and back once a year for every inter-state migrant worker, plus the benefits your other workers get. The 1979 Act’s answer follows, because it still explains licences and records made under it.

Under the 1979 Act, recruiting five or more workmen in one state for a site in another needed a licence in addition to anything else you held, taken from the licensing officer where you recruited. The budget carried the displacement allowance at half a month’s wages per worker, both fares, the journey days as paid days, and accommodation. The particulars went to both states inside fifteen days and the pass books were issued. The penalties were nominal and the commercial consequences were not, because the money came off your bill rather than out of a court.

If you are bidding work that will need a crew brought from another state, price the compliance into the rate before you quote. Live requirements are listed under current tenders and work opportunities, and where a job needs machines as well as men, equipment finance options in India are the place to start.

Section references are to the Occupational Safety, Health and Working Conditions Code, 2020 and its Central Rules of 2026 where the Code is named, and otherwise to the Inter-State Migrant Workmen (Regulation of Employment and Conditions of Service) Act, 1979, repealed on 21 November 2025. State rules, prescribed forms, fees and authorities differ and change. This is general information and not legal advice; confirm your position and current obligations with the labour department concerned or a qualified advisor before relying on it.