Factories Act, 1948: What Replaced It and What Changed

Factories Act, 1948 to OSH Code, 2020: section map

This map takes the main subjects of the repealed Factories Act, 1948 and shows where each one now sits in the Occupational Safety, Health and Working Conditions Code, 2020, with a verdict on whether the duty is unchanged, changed or dropped. Read it as a starting point, not as the statute itself.

New-code sections shown in brackets are grounded in the supplied OSH Code, 2020 text. Old Act items are described by subject from the repealed Factories Act, 1948, without asserting specific old section numbers.

What changed

The biggest change is structural. The Factories Act, 1948 was a standalone law written only for factories. It has been repealed and folded into the Occupational Safety, Health and Working Conditions Code, 2020, one of the four labour codes that came into force on 21 November 2025, with the Central Rules notified on 8 May 2026. Factory duties on health, safety, welfare and hours now read from the same code that also governs mines, docks, building work, plantations and other establishments.

• Working hours are restated in [OSH Section 25]: no worker may work more than eight hours in a day, and the rest intervals and the spread over of the working day are fixed by government notification rather than sitting as fixed figures inside the Act.
• Welfare thresholds are redrawn in [OSH Section 24]. A canteen is required where 100 or more workers, counting contract labourers, are ordinarily employed, and shelters, rest-rooms and a lunch-room are required where more than 50 workers are employed.
• Facilities are now defined separately for male, female and transgender employees, for washing, bathing and locker rooms and for rest-rooms, which the older factory law did not spell out.
• The factory inspector is replaced by the Inspector-cum-Facilitator, the officer named in [OSH Section 14] as the point of escalation for safety concerns and imminent danger.

What stayed the same

The protective core survives. The eight-hour working day remains the daily ceiling. The list of welfare facilities is recognisably the same: washing places, storage and drying of clothing, seating for those obliged to work standing, first-aid boxes accessible through all working hours, an ambulance room in the largest workplaces, and a welfare officer.

• First-aid boxes or cupboards must still be provided and kept readily accessible during all working hours [OSH Section 24].
• An ambulance room is still required in the largest workplaces, where more than 500 workers are ordinarily employed [OSH Section 24].
• The role of a welfare officer is retained, with the detail now set by prescribed rules [OSH Section 24].
• A daily maximum of eight hours of work continues as the baseline [OSH Section 25].

What was dropped or newly added

Some duties are genuinely new, and some old scaffolding is gone.

• Newly added: a clear statutory right in [OSH Section 14] for every employee to obtain health and safety information, to raise inadequate protection with the employer directly or through a Safety Committee, and, where there is a reasonable apprehension of imminent serious injury or death, to escalate to the Inspector-cum-Facilitator, whose decision on the existence of imminent danger is final.
• Newly added: explicit provision for transgender employees in welfare facilities [OSH Section 24].
• Newly added: contract labourers are counted toward the canteen threshold [OSH Section 24], closing a gap that let some employers keep headcounts below the line.
• Dropped as a separate law: the Factories Act, 1948 no longer exists as a standalone statute. Its definition, registration and licensing machinery is absorbed into the OSH Code framework, which is not reproduced in the extract used for this page.

Transition traps for employers

• Recount your canteen obligation. If you relied on a headcount that excluded contract labour, the 100-worker count in [OSH Section 24] may now tip you into providing a canteen.
• Do not hard-code working-hour figures. Rest intervals and spread over are now set by notification under [OSH Section 25], so your standing orders and shift rosters must track the notified numbers, not a fixed clause copied from the old Act.
• Update facility provision for transgender employees, which [OSH Section 24] now requires separately for washing, bathing, locker rooms and rest-rooms.
• Rewrite policies that cite old Factories Act section numbers. Your safety, welfare and working-time policies should reference the OSH Code, and your escalation process should name the Inspector-cum-Facilitator and the Safety Committee route in [OSH Section 14].
• Re-register under the common registration regime of the OSH Code rather than assuming an old factory licence carries over, and confirm that mechanism from the current text, since it is not set out in the extract used here.

How to confirm

Treat this page as a map, not the statute. Read the current section text of the Occupational Safety, Health and Working Conditions Code, 2020 and check the repeal schedule that lists the Factories Act, 1948 among the Acts repealed, both available on indiacode.nic.in, before you rely on any threshold or duty for a compliance decision.

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