90% states published draft rules on 4 labour codes: Government

Finalising rules by a handful of states are holding back the implementation of Labour Codes but Labour Minister Bhupender Yadav on Wednesday expressed confidence about an early resolution as the government is working in the true spirit of cooperative federalism.

Officials said states like Nagaland, Manipur, Andhra Pradesh, Rajasthan and West Bengal have not framed rules for one or more Codes and the Ministry of Labour and Employment is in the process prompting these states to speed up the exercise.

Yadav said around 90 per cent of the states have already published draft rules on four labour codes and he expects the four legislations would become operational soon. However, he did not give a time-line.

A senior official said the Ministry is helping smaller states, which are in need of guidance, in framing the rules.

The Narendra Modi government had in 2019 and 2020 enacted four Labour Codes – The Code on Wages, 2019; The Industrial Relations Code, 2020; The Code on Social Security, 2020; and The Occupational Safety, Health and Working Conditions Code, 2020 by amalgamating 29 central labour laws.

While the 29 laws had 1,232 sections, the four Codes had just 489 by avoiding repetitive or redundant sections, which were creating confusion.

The Centre has pre-published the draft rules for all four codes. Now states are required to frame regulations on their part as labour is a concurrent subject.

Yadav said the Narendra Modi government was working to provide social security to the entire workforce in the country and cited the setting up of e-Shram portal, which is a national database of unorganised sector workers.

After registering around 28 crore unorganised sector workers, he said, the government now intends to enrol the remaining around 10 crore unorganised workers on the e-Shram portal by this year-end.

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