One Year After Notification, India's Labour Codes Are Still Not Operative — Here's the Government's Fix
The four Labour Codes took effect in November 2025, but no state has notified rules under all four. The government's response: a 90-day, 316-district outreach campaign.
India's four Labour Codes — Wages, Industrial Relations, Social Security, and Occupational Safety, Health & Working Conditions (OSH) — took effect on November 21, 2025. Central rules followed on May 8, 2026. On paper, the biggest overhaul of India's labour law framework in decades is now law. In practice, it barely functions yet.
The gap nobody outside HR/compliance circles talks about
Labour sits on the Concurrent List of India's Constitution — meaning both the central government and individual states have law-making power over it. The central codes and central rules are only half the picture: each state also has to notify its own rules before the codes are actually enforceable within that state. As of September 2026, no state has notified rules under all four codes. Some states have partial notifications; many have none.
The government's response: outreach, not enforcement
Rather than pushing enforcement ahead of readiness, the Ministry of Labour and Employment launched the "Shram Samvad" campaign on September 28, 2026 — a 90-day outreach effort spanning 316 districts across all 36 states and union territories. The campaign's explicit purpose is twofold: explaining compliance requirements to employers and workers, and addressing concerns about automation and AI's impact on jobs — a sign the government sees the Labour Codes rollout and the broader AI-employment anxiety as connected communication challenges.
Why this matters for compliance right now
This creates a genuinely confusing compliance position: the Labour Codes are legally in force nationally, but practically unenforceable in most states because the state-level rules that operationalise them don't exist yet. For HR and compliance teams, that's not a reason to ignore the codes — many provisions carry real obligations once a state does notify — but it does mean compliance timelines vary sharply by state, and a one-size-fits-all national rollout plan will misfire.
What to actually do
Track your specific states of operation individually rather than assuming national "in force" status means uniform enforceability everywhere. The Shram Samvad campaign's district-level outreach is also a genuine information source — regional labour department sessions under this campaign are likely to surface state-specific rule timelines well before formal notifications catch up in official channels.
Sources: Omnivoo · Beacon Filing · IAS Point