Parliament passed the Code on Wages in 2019 and the other three labour codes in 2020. The Centre brought the four codes into effect on 21 November 2025 and notified final Central Rules on 8 May 2026. The legal delay is largely over. The administrative difficulty remains.
The Ministry of Labour and Employment is now building the digital layer needed to run the codes across the Union and the states. It is working to connect state labour portals with the Centre’s Shram Suvidha and Samadhan platforms. The plan is to use these systems for registration, licences, returns, inspection records, grievances and industrial disputes. Labour sits in the Concurrent List, so the Centre can set the framework, but state governments will still decide much of the worker’s and employer’s experience.
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Labour codes need state portals
The labour ministry’s own annual report says Shram Suvidha is being revamped for single registration, common licences, a common annual return and web-based randomised inspections under the codes. That is the right administrative sequence. A law that requires online filings, digital records and electronic inspections cannot work through paper offices and disconnected state databases.
States have been asked to connect their labour systems with central platforms through APIs. Where a state does not have a functional labour administration portal, it will first need the basic infrastructure. This is where the implementation of the labour codes will either gain credibility or lose it.
A single national code can still produce different outcomes in Bengaluru, Patna, Mumbai or Guwahati if state portals, inspectors and labour departments work at different speeds. The Centre can notify rules. It cannot, by notification, equalise software capacity, staffing levels or enforcement habits across states.
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Shram Suvidha integration is uneven
The present dashboard already shows the gap. Karnataka has integrated around 15 labour-related approvals and registrations with the Shram Suvidha-National Single Window System link. Gujarat and Kerala show two each. West Bengal and Meghalaya show no records. These are not small administrative details. They indicate how far states are from a common compliance interface.
For employers operating in several states, that gap means separate procedures, repeated filings and different inspection records. For workers, it can mean that grievance redressal depends less on the code and more on the state portal through which a complaint is filed.
Samadhan is meant to handle industrial disputes, claims and worker grievances. It allows online filing and tracking by workers, trade unions and management. By 30 June 2024, the portal had received 63,001 complaints and disposed of 45,657. That shows both the demand for digital grievance systems and the backlog risk if scale rises without state capacity.
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Labour reform cannot be only digital
The digital push also has limits. Online records can reduce duplication. A common return can lower compliance costs. A web-based inspection system can reduce discretion. But none of this, by itself, settles the harder questions raised by unions and worker groups.
Trade unions have opposed the codes, warning that simplification of compliance could weaken worker rights. Their concern cannot be answered by better software alone. A worker denied wages, a contract worker misclassified, or a migrant worker without documents needs enforcement, not only a portal login.
The government has argued that the codes expand minimum wage protection, formalise employment relationships, widen social security and reduce the burden of multiple laws. That argument will be judged through implementation. If digital systems mainly help establishments file returns, the reform will look employer-facing. If they also make claims, inspections, dispute resolution and social security portable, workers will see some gain.
State capacity will decide labour code rollout
The larger reform is still administrative. The Centre has consolidated 29 laws into four codes. It has notified rules. It is revamping Shram Suvidha and Samadhan. The next stage belongs to state labour departments.
Some states will align quickly because they already have digital systems, stronger departments and larger formal sectors. Others will need money, training and technical support before they can use the new framework. The difference will show up in inspection quality, grievance timelines, data reliability and the ability of firms to comply without hiring local intermediaries.
India’s labour codes were sold as a national reform. Their success will be measured in state offices. The first phase was legislative. The second is digital. The decisive phase will be administrative.