Helpline, Study and Past Liabilities
Chapter Sixty-Three
Syllabus topic 4.2, "Inter-State Migrant Workers and types of workers"
Pages 438 to 443 of 597
In one line
The Government may run a helpline and may commission a study, and the debt a migrant worker still owes his contractor or principal employer dies with the job.
In exam wording: section 63 of the Occupational Safety, Health and Working Conditions Code 2020 permits the appropriate Government to provide a toll free helpline facility to inter-State migrant workers; section 64 permits it to provide for a study of inter-State migrant workers; and section 65 bars any suit or proceeding for the recovery of a debt relating to an inter-State migrant worker after the completion of his employment where it remains an unsettled obligation to the contractor or the principal employer, and deems such debt to have been extinguished on the completion of the period of employment.
Why the law has these at all
The three sections answer three different failures, and the third is the oldest failure in Indian labour.
Section 63, the helpline, exists because a worker in a State he does not know has no way of reaching the machinery that is supposed to protect him. He cannot name the labour office, he may not read the language of its board, and he cannot lose a day's wages going to look for it. A telephone number costs the State very little and is the only piece of enforcement machinery in the Code that the worker himself can operate.
Section 64, the study, exists because nobody knows how many inter-State migrant workers there are. The single most quoted fact about the migration of 2020 is that no Government could say how many people were walking. A statute cannot conjure a census, but it can name the gap and authorise the work.
Section 65, past liabilities, exists because of the advance. The recruitment of migrant labour has always run on money paid before the journey: an advance to the family, the cost of the fare, a deduction for tools, a charge for the place to sleep. The debt is then set against the wages, and because it grows faster than the wages it is never discharged. The worker cannot leave, because leaving does not end the debt, and the arrangement is bonded labour in everything but name.
Section 65 attacks that by making the debt die when the employment ends. Once the worker's obligation cannot outlive the job, the advance stops being a chain.
Some words this chapter uses
Toll free means the caller pays nothing for the call.
Debt here is money owed by the worker; the section speaks of an unsettled obligation to the contractor or the principal employer.
Extinguished means ended, so that nothing survives to be sued upon.
Helpline, Study and Past Liabilities
No suit or other proceeding shall lie is a bar on the remedy, addressed to courts and authorities.
Completion of the period of employment is the point from which the extinguishment runs.
Section 63: the toll free helpline
The appropriate Government may provide facility of toll free helpline to the inter-State migrant workers in such manner as may be prescribed by that Government.
The section is one line and there are three things to say about it.
It is permissive. The word is may. Contrast section 62, where the appropriate Government shall make schemes.
It is unstructured. The Code does not say what the helpline must do, who must answer it, in what languages, or with what power to act on what it is told. All of that is left to the manner prescribed.
It is nonetheless the only direct channel in the Part. Every other protection in Chapter XI works through an Inspector-cum-Facilitator, a licensing authority or an employer. This one works through the worker.
Section 64: the study
The appropriate Government may provide for study of inter-State migrant workers in such manner as may be prescribed by that Government.
Also permissive, and also unstructured. The Code does not say what is to be studied, how often, or whether the result is to be published.
An examination answer should resist treating this as filler. A study is how a State learns the size and route of its migration, and every scheme under section 62 depends on knowing where the workers come from and where they go. But the criticism is equally fair: a power to study, unaccompanied by any duty to maintain a register or to publish what is found, produces nothing a worker can rely on.
Section 65: past liabilities
No suit or other proceeding shall lie in any court or before any authority for the recovery of debt or any part thereof relating to an inter-State migrant worker after the completion of his employment where it remains unsettled obligation to the contractor or the principal employer, and such debt or part thereof shall, on the completion of the period of employment of such worker, be deemed to have been extinguished.
This is the most important sentence in Part II and the one most often stated backwards. Take it in pieces.
Whose debt? The worker's. The words are unsettled obligation to the contractor or the principal employer. The debt runs from the worker to them. Nothing in the section touches what the contractor or the principal employer owes the worker, and a claim for unpaid wages is unaffected by it.
What is barred? No suit or other proceeding shall lie in any court or before any authority. So the bar is not confined to civil courts; it covers proceedings before any authority, including recovery machinery.
Helpline, Study and Past Liabilities
From when? After the completion of his employment, and the debt is deemed extinguished on the completion of the period of employment.
How much is extinguished? The debt or any part thereof. Part payment does not preserve the balance.
And it is not merely a bar on the remedy. The section does both jobs at once: it bars the proceeding and deems the debt extinguished. A time bar leaves the debt alive and unenforceable, so it can still be set off or secured. Extinguishment kills the obligation itself.
Two limits are worth naming honestly. The section operates at the completion of the employment, so it does nothing about deductions made during the employment, which is when the advance is actually recovered from wages. And it says nothing about the enforcement that is not legal: the debt that is collected by keeping a man's papers, or by threatening his family in the village, was never going to be sued upon in any court.
The provision to read with it is section 49, which forbids the contractor to charge directly or indirectly, in whole or in part, any fee or commission from the contract labour. Section 49 stops the debt being created; section 65 stops it outliving the job.
A worked example
Ramesh is recruited in Jharkhand by a contractor for a brick kiln in Telangana. He is paid an advance of twelve thousand rupees before he leaves. Over the season the kiln deducts amounts from his wages against the advance and against the cost of his food and his sleeping place. When the season ends, the contractor's ledger shows Ramesh still owing nine thousand rupees.
Is Ramesh an inter-State migrant worker? Yes, on the facts. He was recruited indirectly through a contractor in one State for employment in an establishment in another State: section 2(1)(zf)(i), assuming his wages do not exceed eighteen thousand rupees a month.
Can the contractor sue him for the nine thousand rupees? No. Under section 65, no suit or other proceeding shall lie in any court or before any authority for the recovery of that debt after the completion of his employment, and the debt is deemed to have been extinguished on the completion of the period of employment.
Can the contractor take it to a revenue authority instead? No. The bar covers proceedings before any authority, not only courts.
The contractor says only part of it is disputed and he will sue for six thousand rupees. The section extinguishes the debt or any part thereof.
Helpline, Study and Past Liabilities
The contractor keeps Ramesh's Aadhaar card until he pays. Section 65 does not authorise that and does not answer it; the debt is gone, so there is nothing to secure. What the section cannot do is prevent extra legal collection, which is a matter for the criminal law.
The kiln still owes Ramesh four weeks' wages. Section 65 does not touch that claim. It bars recovery of an unsettled obligation to the contractor or the principal employer, not an obligation owed to the worker. His wages are recoverable under section 55, and if the contractor does not pay, from the principal employer under section 55(3) and out of the security deposit under section 55(4).
Ramesh wants to complain but does not know where to go. Under section 63 the appropriate Government may provide a toll free helpline for inter-State migrant workers in the manner it prescribes.
Telangana wants to know how many workers like Ramesh come each season. Under section 64 the appropriate Government may provide for a study of inter-State migrant workers in the manner it prescribes.
What this does NOT mean
Section 65 does not extinguish what is owed to the worker. It extinguishes the worker's unsettled obligation to the contractor or the principal employer.
It is not a limitation provision. It bars the proceeding and deems the debt extinguished, so the obligation itself ends.
It is not confined to courts. No proceeding lies before any authority either.
It does not protect wages during the employment. It operates on completion of the employment, and deductions made while the work continues are outside it.
Sections 63 and 64 are not duties. Both say may. Compare section 62, which says shall.
The helpline is not defined. Its manner, staffing, languages and powers are all left to be prescribed.
Limits and criticism
Two of these three sections confer powers and impose no duty. A helpline that is never provided and a study that is never commissioned are both consistent with the Code.
Neither section 63 nor section 64 has any content. No standard for the helpline, no subject matter for the study, no requirement to publish. Compare section 62, which at least names what the schemes must provide.
Section 65 works only at the end of the employment. The advance is recovered from wages throughout the season, so the worker who is exploited by deduction is not helped by a section that acts when the deductions have already been made.
Section 65 has no penalty. A contractor who demands the money anyway commits no offence named by this section; the section merely denies him a forum.
Nothing in Part II creates a register of inter-State migrant workers. The study power in section 64 is the closest the Code comes, and a study is not a register. The migration of 2020 failed for want of a list, and the Code answers it with a discretionary study and a discretionary telephone line.
Helpline, Study and Past Liabilities
Quick revision
- Section 63: the appropriate Government may provide a toll free helpline to inter-State migrant workers, in the manner prescribed.
- Section 64: the appropriate Government may provide for a study of inter-State migrant workers, in the manner prescribed.
- Section 65: no suit or other proceeding shall lie in any court or before any authority for the recovery of a debt or any part of it relating to an inter-State migrant worker after the completion of his employment, where it remains an unsettled obligation to the contractor or the principal employer; and the debt is deemed extinguished on the completion of the period of employment.
- Direction matters: section 65 kills what the worker owes, not what is owed to him.
- Read section 65 with section 49, which forbids the contractor to charge any fee or commission from the contract labour, directly or indirectly, in whole or in part.
Test yourself
1. Are sections 63 and 64 mandatory? No. Both provide that the appropriate Government may act, and both leave the manner to be prescribed. Section 62, by contrast, provides that it shall make schemes.
2. State section 65 and identify whose obligation it extinguishes. No suit or other proceeding shall lie in any court or before any authority for the recovery of a debt or any part of it relating to an inter-State migrant worker after the completion of his employment where it remains an unsettled obligation to the contractor or the principal employer, and the debt is deemed extinguished on the completion of the period of employment. It extinguishes what the worker owes them.
3. Does section 65 affect the worker's claim for unpaid wages? No. It bars recovery of an obligation owed to the contractor or principal employer. The worker's wages remain recoverable, from the contractor under section 55(1), from the principal employer under section 55(3) on failure or short payment, and out of the contractor's security deposit under section 55(4).
4. Why is section 65 stronger than a period of limitation? Because it does two things. A limitation provision bars the remedy and leaves the debt alive, so it may still be set off or secured. Section 65 bars the proceeding and deems the debt extinguished, so the obligation itself ceases to exist.
5. What is the practical weakness of section 65? It operates only on completion of the employment. The advance against which the worker is bound is recovered by deductions from his wages during the employment, which the section does not touch; and it attaches no penalty to a contractor who continues to demand payment outside any legal proceeding.
Helpline, Study and Past Liabilities
6. Why does the Code bother with a helpline at all? Because it is the only protection in Chapter XI that the worker can set in motion himself. Every other mechanism runs through an Inspector-cum-Facilitator, a licensing authority or the employer, none of whom a worker newly arrived in another State knows how to reach.
The rest of this subject
These notes are cut from the University's printed syllabus. Open the syllabus itself for the same subject.