Rules, Regulations, Bye-laws and the OSH Repeals

In one line

The Code ends with the machinery that fills it in, and with the repeal of the thirteen Acts it replaced.

In exam wording: sections 133 and 134 of the Occupational Safety, Health and Working Conditions Code 2020 empower the appropriate Government and the Central Government respectively to make rules subject to previous publication; section 135 empowers the State Government to make rules; section 136 empowers the Central Government to make regulations for mines and dock work; section 137 requires previous publication with not less than forty five days for comment; section 138 permits regulations to be made without previous publication or reference to the National Board where danger is apprehended; section 139 provides for bye-laws framed by the employer of a mine and approved by the Central Government; section 140 empowers the Central Government to make rules regulating general safety and health during an epidemic, pandemic or disaster; sections 141 and 142 require laying before Parliament and the State Legislature; and section 143 repeals thirteen enactments, saves appointments and things done, and applies section 6 of the General Clauses Act 1897.

Why the law has these at all

A Code of a hundred and forty three sections replacing thirteen Acts cannot carry its own detail. What survives in the statute are the duties, the offences and the machinery; the numbers, the forms, the qualifications and the technical standards are all left to subordinate legislation, and these eleven sections say who makes it, how, and with what oversight.

Three ideas deserve to be drawn out, because they are what an examiner is asking about.

The Code distinguishes three kinds of subordinate law, and they are not interchangeable. Rules are the ordinary instrument, made by the appropriate Government or the Central Government under sections 133 to 135. Regulations are made only by the Central Government and only for mines and dock work, under section 136, which is why the two most technical and most dangerous trades in the Code have their own instrument. Bye-laws are different in kind: they are framed by the employer of a mine for his own mine, and approved by the Central Government, so they are workplace specific law.

Prior publication is the general discipline, and section 138 is the exception that proves it. Rules, regulations and bye-laws must be published in draft with not less than forty five days for comment. Section 138 lets a regulation for mines or dock work be made without previous publication and without reference to the National Board where the Central Government is satisfied that it is necessary for the prevention of apprehended danger or the speedy remedy of conditions likely to cause danger. A danger that is coming does not wait forty five days.