Labor Minister Vandana Gurnani
The four labor laws have been notified, but the actual implementation would take at least three months as the relevant rules need to be published in advance and discussed again with stakeholders. Additionally, the government has mandated aggregators and platform owners to expedite their registration to provide social security benefits to about 1 crore gig workers through Direct Benefit Transfers (DBTs).
In the last three months, the number of gig workers registered with the e-Shram portal has increased from 3.37 lakh in August to around 30 lakh this month.
Pre-published
In an interview with business area, Labor Minister Vandana Gurnani said the rules on all four labor laws – the Wages Code (2019), the Industrial Relations Code (2020), the Social Security Code (2020) and the Code on Safety, Health and Working Conditions at Work (2020) – would be published in advance.
“The rules have also been pre-published in the past, comments received, finalized and held ready. However, the legal requirement is that since some time has passed since their pre-publication, the process must be exhausted again. The rules on all four labor laws will be pre-published again over the next week or 10 days. Another 45 days will be available for people to comment and another 45 days or so we would have to do.” Finalize them,” Gurnani said, explaining the timeline for rolling out the four codes.
The entire process is expected to take at least three months.
“We hope that in the next three months we will follow this process in the key area of labor laws (for implementation),” Gurnani said.
The Ministry of Labor communicates with the countries in real time via a joint WhatsApp group in which suggestions and ideas are discussed.
social security
The expansion of social security benefits is a concern for the government as a number of funds have not been adequately disbursed. For example, there has been a tax exemption for construction workers for two decades, but the payout has been negligible. Gurnani said the government is aware of the fact that workers cannot access social security benefits due to registration problems. She said aggregators have been asked to help register workers.
“The registration will be done through e-Shram. It will be done through Aadhaar. Since there was no mandate, we did not have all the data. But we had data for around 25-30 lakh workers. A mandate will strengthen that. The aggregators are now required to provide this data and register workers through Aadhaar on the e-Shram portal. It would be DBTs. Bank accounts linked to Aadhaar will reap the benefits,” Gurnani said.
Published on November 27, 2025