State Insurance: Who Has to Register

The Act MU names is repealed too

MU's topic reads "Business Registration under The Employees' State Insurance Act, 1948."

Section 164(1) of the Code on Social Security, 2020 repeals it. Item 2 of the list of nine:

2. The Employees' State Insurance Act, 1948 (34 of 1948);

Section 164(1) came into force on 21 November 2025 by S.O. 5319(E), so the 1948 Act is gone.

Section 164(2)(a) saves what was done under it: anything done or any action taken under the repealed enactments, including any rule, regulation, notification, scheme, appointment, order or direction, is deemed to have been done under the corresponding provisions of the Code. An establishment holding an ESIC code number keeps it.

Which chapter of the Code

Chapter IV of the Code on Social Security 2020 is Employees' State Insurance Corporation. It carries the Corporation, the fund, the contributions and the benefits that the 1948 Act carried.

Who has to register

The First Schedule to the Code, for Chapter IV:

Every establishment in which ten or more persons are employed other than a seasonal factory:

Ten or more persons, and not twenty. That is the first thing to fix: the two thresholds in Module II are different, twenty for provident fund and ten for state insurance, and a firm can be within one and outside the other.

And note the word. Chapter III says employees; Chapter IV says persons. The count for state insurance is of persons employed.

The three provisos, and they are examinable

The First Schedule entry for Chapter IV carries three provisos, and each changes the answer in a real case.

First proviso, hazardous occupations:

Provided that Chapter IV shall also be applicable to an establishment, which carries on such hazardous or life threatening occupation as notified by the Central Government, in which even a single employee is employed:

Even one employee. An establishment in a notified hazardous or life-threatening occupation is covered from its first employee, and the ten-person threshold does not apply to it at all.

Second proviso, plantations:

Provided further that an employer of a plantation, may opt the application of Chapter IV in respect of the plantation by giving willingness to the corporation, where the benefits available to the employees under that Chapter are better than what the employer is providing to them:

An option, not an obligation, and it is exercisable only where the Chapter's benefits are better than what the employer already provides.

Third proviso, when contributions begin:

Provided also that the contribution from the employers and employees of an establishment shall be payable under section 29 on and from the date on which any benefits under Chapter IV relating to the Employees State Insurance Corporation are provided by the Corporation to the employees of the establishment and such date shall be notified by the Central Government.