General Penalties and Obstruction

In one line

Any contravention not otherwise provided for costs the employer between two and three lakh rupees, obstructing an inspector can mean three months in prison, and failing to keep or produce a register costs between fifty thousand and one lakh.

In exam wording: section 94 of the Occupational Safety, Health and Working Conditions Code 2020 provides a general penalty of not less than two lakh rupees and up to three lakh rupees on the employer or principal employer for any contravention of the Code, rules, regulations, bye-laws, standards or written orders for which no express provision is made, with a further penalty up to two thousand rupees a day if the contravention continues after conviction; section 95 punishes wilful obstruction of a Chief Inspector-cum-Facilitator, Inspector-cum-Facilitator, officer, authorised person or expert, refusal of entry, failure to produce documents and failure to comply with a requisition or order, with imprisonment up to three months or fine up to one lakh rupees or both, and doubles the exposure on a second conviction; and section 96 penalises failure to maintain a register or document, to file returns, or to produce a register, plan, record, report or other document, with not less than fifty thousand and up to one lakh rupees, and up to two lakh rupees on a second conviction.

Why the law has this at all

A statute of duties needs a residual offence, an offence against the machinery, and an offence against the record. Sections 94, 95 and 96 are those three.

Section 94 is the residual offence. The Code imposes several hundred duties and could not provide a separate penalty for each. So it provides one penalty for everything not expressly provided for, and it does so with a floor: not less than two lakh rupees. A floor matters more than a ceiling in labour law, because a fine that is smaller than the saving made by not complying is simply a licence fee.

Section 95 protects the machinery. Every duty in the Code is ultimately enforced by a person walking into the establishment and looking. An employer who keeps him out, or refuses him the papers, defeats the whole scheme at the cheapest possible point, which is why this is one of the few sections in the Chapter that begins with imprisonment.

Section 96 protects the record. Almost every fact that matters in labour law, who worked, for how long, for what wage, on what process, exists only in a register the employer keeps. Losing the register is the oldest defence in the field.

And one drafting change should be noticed at the outset. The Code distinguishes throughout Chapter XII between a penalty, which is a sum recoverable in adjudication, and a punishment, which is imprisonment or fine on conviction by a court. The distinction is visible in the marginal notes and in the operative words: shall be liable to penalty on one hand and shall be punishable on the other. Sections 94 and 96 are penalties; section 95 is a punishment.