OSH Code transition in Tamil Nadu: what factories need to know

What changed, and what did not

The Occupational Safety, Health and Working Conditions Code, 2020 came into force on 21 November 2025 (S.O. 5321(E)), and on that day the Factories Act, 1948 was repealed (OSH Code, s.143(1)(a)). That is the settled part. The harder question for a factory in Tamil Nadu is what has replaced the Act in practice, and the answer is less dramatic than the word "repeal" suggests. The Code carries forward most of what was done under the old law, Tamil Nadu has not yet notified final rules of its own, and DISH continues to administer approvals on the Tamil Nadu Factories Rules, 1950.

The Tamil Nadu Factories Rules are not a relic. The State amended them as recently as September 2025 (G.O. Ms. No. 109, Labour Welfare and Skill Development, 22 September 2025), and section 143(3) carries them into the Code era. What section 143(3) does not do is keep alive any rule that conflicts with the Code. Where the Code now sets a different standard, the Code wins, and that is why every saved rule has to be read alongside it.

Which government makes the rules for your factory

For a factory, the "appropriate Government" under the Code is the State Government where it is situated (OSH Code, s.2(1)(d)(ii)). That holds even for a factory run by a Central public sector undertaking: sub-clause (i), which gives the Central Government that role for Central public sector undertakings, oil fields, major ports, mines and the other establishments it lists, expressly excludes the establishments in sub-clause (ii), and a factory is one of them. An oil field or port operation that is not a factory is a different matter, so a petrochemical, LNG or port-linked site should check how each part of its operation is classified before deciding whose rules apply.

Even for an ordinary private factory, the split is not clean. The Code leaves some matters to the Central Government for every establishment, whichever government is otherwise appropriate: occupational safety and health standards (s.18), the health, safety and working conditions an employer must maintain (s.23), and welfare facilities such as canteens, crèches and rest rooms (s.24). For those, the Occupational Safety, Health and Working Conditions (Central) Rules, 2026 apply to a Tamil Nadu factory now. Other matters, including plan approval, licensing and renewal, are for the State (s.79(1), s.135), and those are the areas where the saved Tamil Nadu rules still do the work.

Which premises are factories now

The Code raised the worker threshold. Premises are a factory if a manufacturing process is carried on with 20 or more workers where power is used, or 40 or more without power, on any day of the preceding twelve months (OSH Code, s.2(1)(w)). The old figures were 10 and 20. A proviso keeps a different number where a State law in force before commencement specified one, until that State's legislature changes it. No Tamil Nadu notification or court decision we have found settles whether the old 10 and 20 count as such a law here, so if you are in the gap between the two sets of figures, take advice before you treat the premises as outside factory licensing.

Licences, deemed permissions and deemed licences

A licence granted before 21 November 2025 is treated as a licence under the Code, but only for the period it was issued for; after that it has to be obtained afresh (OSH Code, s.119(5)). Section 119(5) does not extend the printed expiry date. The renewal is filed on DISH's current procedure, described on renewing your factory licence.

The Code also introduces deeming provisions, and each comes with conditions. For plan approval, an electronic application for permission that carries the plans and specifications the rules require is treated as granted if no order is communicated within the prescribed period, which cannot exceed thirty days (s.79(2)). For licences, section 119 provides that a licence applied for to the authority the appropriate Government designates by notification is to be issued within forty-five days, failing which it is deemed issued (s.119(1) and (4)). We have not found a Tamil Nadu notification designating that authority, and until there is one we would not rely on the forty-five-day deemed licence for a factory here. Refusals under section 119 can be appealed within thirty days (s.119(6)).

What it costs to get wrong

The transition did not cancel existing approvals, and it did not freeze the old law either. Two opposite mistakes follow. One is to treat commencement as wiping the slate, and to stop maintaining approved plans, licence particulars or returns because "the Act is gone". The other is to treat every Factories Act provision, or the April 2022 draft rules, as still governing, when a saved rule survives only so far as it is consistent with the Code and the draft is not law. Either way, the usual result is a filing on the wrong basis: a renewal left until after the printed expiry, an expansion carried out on an old licence, or a welfare facility measured against the old threshold instead of the Code's.

The process

1. Check the licence and its expiry date

   Read the licence and the date printed on it. A licence issued before 21 November 2025 runs for its original period and no longer (OSH Code, s.119(5)). Diary the renewal from that date.

2. Keep the record of what was granted

   Keep the approved plans, permissions, statutory returns and filing acknowledgements together. The protection section 143 gives to earlier approvals rests on being able to show what was approved.

3. Confirm the filing route before you apply

   Before a renewal, an amendment or a fresh application, confirm the procedure DISH accepts. Do not treat the April 2022 draft (G.O. Ms. No. 38) as the final forms, fees or procedure.

4. Re-check welfare and staffing against the Code

   Measure canteens, crèches, rest rooms, ambulance rooms, welfare officers and safety officers against the Code's own thresholds and the Central Rules, not the Factories Act figures. The thresholds are set out on factory approvals and licensing.

5. Check expansions and hazardous processes

   Before adding capacity, changing a process or starting a hazardous activity, check whether a further approval is needed. Section 83 allows the appropriate Government to constitute a Site Appraisal Committee for the initial location or expansion of a factory involving a hazardous process (OSH Code, s.83), and in Tamil Nadu that is the committee under saved rule 61-Q. The detail is on site appraisal for a hazardous-process factory.

6. Put departmental clarifications in writing

   Where DISH tells you how it is handling a point during the transition, keep the question, the date and the reply. That record is what you will rely on if the position is later questioned.

The annual return raises the same transition question in a sharper form; see factory returns.

Common failure points

• Reading commencement as a cancellation. Section 143(3) keeps rules and permissions made under the old Act alive, so far as they are not contrary to the Code, until the Central Government repeals them.
• Reading the savings as a freeze. Section 119(5) stops at the period the licence was issued for, and a saved rule that conflicts with the Code does not survive.
• Filing on the April 2022 draft. It was never notified as final.
• Assuming the State makes all the rules. Welfare, working conditions and safety standards are prescribed by the Central Government for every establishment, and an oil field or port operation that is not a factory falls to the Central Government altogether.
• Relying on a deemed licence. The forty-five-day deemed licence in section 119(4) depends on a designated authority, and we have not found the Tamil Nadu designation.
• Treating section 83 as either automatic or optional. It is a power to appraise the location or expansion of a hazardous-process factory. Whether it applies to your project has to be checked.

References: OSH Code, 2020, sections 2(1)(d), 2(1)(w), 18, 23, 24, 79, 83, 119, 134, 135 and 143; S.O. 5321(E), 21 November 2025; Occupational Safety, Health and Working Conditions (Central) Rules, 2026, G.S.R. 345(E); Tamil Nadu draft rules, G.O. Ms. No. 38 (2022); Directorate of Industrial Safety and Health, Tamil Nadu.

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