The Contract Labour (Regulation & Abolition) Act, 1970 (“CLRA”) governs how you engage workers through a contractor. Once you cross the threshold (generally 20 or more contract workers), several obligations apply to you as principal employer — not only to the contractor.
The checklist
- Principal employer registration — obtain your registration certificate covering each contractor and the maximum number of workers.
- Contractor licence — ensure every contractor supplying labour holds a valid licence for your establishment.
- Form V — issue the certificate the contractor needs to obtain their licence.
- Statutory registers — muster roll, wage register, register of overtime, deductions, fines, and advances, maintained and current.
- Wage payment — wages paid on time, at or above minimum wage, in the presence of your authorised representative.
- Welfare facilities — canteen, rest rooms, drinking water, first aid and washing facilities where applicable.
- Display & notices — abstract of the Act, wage rates, and working hours displayed at the workplace.
- Returns — annual and half-yearly returns filed within the prescribed dates.
The trap most factories fall into
Compliance is not a one-time registration — it is a monthly discipline. Licences expire, DA-linked wages change, and registers fall behind. An inspector looks for the current file, not last year’s.
How VedhanHR handles it
We track every registration and licence with expiry alerts, auto-generate the statutory registers from real attendance, and assemble a monthly compliance pack you can hand to an inspector — or your auditor — in minutes.