India's Labour Codes: Working Hours, Overtime, and Records

For most of the last seventy years, the answer to "how many hours can my staff work in India" depended on which of twenty-nine statutes covered you. Factories fell under the Factories Act 1948. Offices and shops fell under a Shops and Establishments Act that each state wrote for itself. Contract workers, migrant workers, and journalists each had their own law on top.

That changed on 21 November 2025, when the four Labour Codes came into force and replaced twenty-nine of those Acts. The central rules followed on 8 and 9 May 2026. For working time, the one that matters is the Occupational Safety, Health and Working Conditions Code, 2020 (the OSH Code), which absorbed thirteen laws including the Factories Act.

The honest complication is that "in force" does not yet mean "uniform". The Codes commenced centrally, but each state has to notify its own rules, and as of mid-2026 that work is still uneven. This post covers what the Code and the central rules require, and where you still have to read your state.

#Quick Reference

#What Actually Changed

The four Codes are the Code on Wages 2019, the Industrial Relations Code 2020, the Code on Social Security 2020, and the OSH Code 2020. Together they replace twenty-nine Acts.

For an employer thinking about time tracking, three things changed in practice:

1. One set of hour limits instead of many. The 8-hour day and 48-hour week now come from a single Code and its rules rather than from whichever Act happened to cover your establishment.
2. Overtime consent became explicit. The first proviso to section 27 makes overtime "subject to the consent of such worker". Rostering someone into overtime without it is a contravention in its own right, separate from any underpayment.
3. Registers moved to a single, electronically maintainable format. Section 33 lets you keep the prescribed registers and file returns electronically, which the older Acts handled inconsistently.

What did not change is the level of the limits themselves. Eight hours and forty-eight hours were the Factories Act numbers too. If you were compliant before, the arithmetic has not moved.

#Working Hours and Overtime

#The 8/48 Limits

Section 25 fixes the working day at eight hours, and leaves the intervals and the spread-over to be notified by the appropriate Government. The 48-hour week comes from the rules rather than from the section itself, which is why the weekly figure is cited here to the central rules.

Section 27 then sets the overtime trigger at more than the prescribed hours "in any day or in any week", and adds the detail that decides most disputes: the overtime period is calculated on a daily basis or a weekly basis, whichever is more favourable to the worker.

That last clause is easy to read past and expensive to get wrong. You cannot simply net a 9-hour Tuesday against a 7-hour Wednesday and conclude nothing is owed because the week came in under 48. If the daily calculation gives the worker more, the daily calculation applies.

#Overtime at Twice Wages

Section 27 sets overtime at twice the rate of wages. This is one of the highest statutory multipliers anywhere: most of Europe sits between 25 and 50 percent, and India doubles.

Two conditions attach:

• Consent. The first proviso to section 27 makes overtime subject to the worker's consent. This is not satisfied by a clause buried in the appointment letter that the worker never revisits.
• The quarterly cap. The second proviso lets the appropriate Government prescribe the total number of overtime hours, and the central rules set it at 144 hours in any quarter. That is roughly 11 hours a week averaged across a thirteen-week quarter, and it is a ceiling, not an average you can borrow against.

Because the multiplier is high and the cap is quarterly, the expensive mistake in India is not a single long week. It is a pattern of long weeks that quietly crosses 144 hours in month three and turns a rostering decision into a contravention.

#Rest, Weekly Off, and Leave

• Weekly rest (s 26): one day off every week, with compensatory holidays where a worker is deprived of one.
• Earned leave (s 32): one day of leave for every 20 days worked, accruing through the year.
• Rest intervals during the day and the maximum spread-over are notified by the appropriate Government under section 25, so check your state.

#The State Layer Has Not Gone Away

This is the part that trips up multi-state employers.

The OSH Code is central law, but labour is a concurrent subject under the Indian Constitution. States notify their own rules, and they may set conditions within the bounds the Code allows. As of mid-2026, more than thirty states have notified rules under at least one Code, but there is still no common pan-India commencement date for every provision.

Practically:

• If you operate in one state, read that state's OSH rules alongside the Code. They govern the detail of intervals, spread-over, and register formats.
• If you operate in several, expect the details to differ and track hours in a way that lets you report per state rather than per company.
• If you are in IT or ITeS, check whether your state still applies a sector exemption from parts of the old Shops and Establishments regime, and whether that exemption survived the transition.

Nothing in the Codes lets a state go below the Code's floor. The variation is in the detail, not the limits.

#Record-Keeping

Section 33, which is the whole of Chapter VIII, requires every employer to maintain registers and records and to file returns. The central rules spell out what the overtime register has to contain:

• date
• employee name
• normal hours worked
• overtime hours, with the prescribed rounding applied
• hourly rate
• overtime amount payable

Registers may be kept electronically. That is a genuine simplification over the old Acts, several of which contemplated bound paper volumes.

The practical requirement this creates is a per-worker, per-day record of hours actually worked, not a monthly total reconstructed at payroll time. You cannot produce a compliant overtime register from a headcount and a salary figure, because the register wants the normal hours and the overtime hours separately, per day, per person. The daily-or-weekly rule in section 27 pushes the same way: without daily figures you cannot work out which basis favours the worker.

#Inspection and Penalties

Chapter XII sets the penalties. Note that section 94 is expressly residual, applying only where the Code does not provide a specific penalty, so a register failure is charged under section 96 rather than section 94:

Working-hour breaches, failure to pay overtime, and non-maintenance of the prescribed registers all fall within this regime. Note that falsifying a record is treated more seriously than failing to keep one, which is the usual pattern in labor enforcement: an incomplete record invites a fine, a doctored record invites a prosecution.

#Practical Compliance Checklist

1. Confirm which state rules apply to each of your sites. The Code is national; the operative detail is not.
2. Record hours per worker per day, with normal and overtime hours separated. That is the format the overtime register wants.
3. Capture consent for overtime before it is worked, and keep it with the record rather than in a separate HR file.
4. Track the 144-hour quarterly cap per worker, and alert before it is reached rather than after.
5. Pay overtime at twice wages at the end of each wage period, not annually or at exit.
6. Keep registers electronically and be able to produce them on inspection.

#Common Questions

Are the Labour Codes actually in force? Yes, the four Codes commenced on 21 November 2025, and the central rules were notified in May 2026. But state rules are still being notified, and there is no single commencement date behind which every provision in every state sits. Treat the Code as binding and your state's rules as the operative detail.

Does the Factories Act still apply? No. The OSH Code subsumed it, along with twelve other Acts. Where you see a Factories Act reference in an older policy document, it needs updating.

Can I average hours across weeks? No. The 48-hour week is a weekly limit, not an average over a reference period in the way the EU Working Time Directive allows. Section 27 goes further and calculates overtime on whichever of the daily or weekly basis favours the worker, so a light Wednesday does not cancel a long Tuesday. See the EU Working Time Directive explained for the contrast.

What counts as "wages" for the overtime multiplier? The Code on Wages 2019 introduced a single definition of wages across all four Codes, which was one of the reform's main purposes. It broadly captures basic pay plus dearness allowance and retaining allowance, with statutory exclusions and a floor that stops employers from shrinking "wages" by inflating allowances. Confirm the composition against your own pay structure.

Do these rules cover remote and hybrid staff? The hour limits and the record duty attach to the employment relationship, not to the premises. If someone is your worker, their hours are recordable wherever they sit, so time tracking for remote employees needs the same daily detail as an on-site roster.

#Summary

• The four Labour Codes came into force on 21 November 2025; central rules followed in May 2026
• The OSH Code sets 8 hours a day in section 25, with the 48-hour week coming from the rules, replacing the Factories Act and twelve other laws
• Overtime under section 27 is paid at twice wages, requires the worker's consent, is capped at 144 hours per quarter, and is calculated daily or weekly, whichever favours the worker
• One day off per week; one day of earned leave per 20 days worked
• Registers are mandatory and may be kept electronically, with per-day normal and overtime hours split out
• State rules supply the operative detail and are still being notified, so multi-state employers should report per state

#Sources

• The Occupational Safety, Health and Working Conditions Code, 2020 on indiacode.nic.in
• Ministry of Labour and Employment, Labour Codes FAQs
• PRS Legislative Research: OSH Code bill track
• KPMG: Government of India notifies final rules on the four Labour Codes (May 2026)
• JSA: key considerations of the notified Central Rules

#Where to Go Next

• FLSA overtime in the USA: time tracking 101 for a comparably decentralized system where the state layer also matters
• Working hours in Australia under the Fair Work Act for another jurisdiction where the instrument below the statute carries the detail
• The EU Working Time Directive explained for the contrasting European model