Registrations
Shops and Establishment registration and amendment, EPFO and ESIC coverage, professional tax enrolment, Labour Welfare Fund and Shram Suvidha registration.
Reference library · Edition 2026.1
A working reference for employers who must stay registered, licensed and filed.
Stateman has advised on establishment registrations, contract-labour licensing, POSH obligations and inspection proceedings out of New Delhi since 2015. This library sets out, in plain terms, what the principal statutes require of an employer operating in Delhi and the wider National Capital Region, which forms carry the obligation, and when each falls due.
How this library is organised
The material is arranged by obligation rather than by statute, because employers rarely arrive with a statute in mind. They arrive with a fact — a new office in Okhla, a housekeeping contractor engaging thirty workers, a letter from an Inspector under the Delhi Shops and Establishments Act, 1954 — and need to know what follows from it.
Each section states the trigger for the obligation, the form or portal through which it is discharged, the customary timeline in Delhi as we observe it, and the consequence of default as provided in the relevant penal section. Where practice varies between the Delhi Labour Department, the Regional Office of the Employees' Provident Fund Organisation at Bhikaji Cama Place, and the ESIC Regional Office, we say so rather than generalise.
Readers should treat timelines as indicative. Departmental processing periods fluctuate with notification cycles, and it would be imprudent to plan a transaction on the assumption that a licence will issue in a fixed number of days.
The five obligations that account for most defaults
- Establishment registration under the Delhi Shops and Establishments Act, 1954 — and its amendment when the registered address changes, which it does not do automatically on relocation.
- Principal employer registration in Form I under the Contract Labour (Regulation and Abolition) Act, 1970, which is distinct from, and not substituted by, the contractor's own licence.
- Constitution of an Internal Committee under Section 4 of the Sexual Harassment of Women at Workplace (Prevention, Prohibition and Redressal) Act, 2013, together with the annual report to the District Officer under Section 21.
- Wage revision on notification of the variable dearness allowance by the Government of the NCT of Delhi, with arrears computed from the effective date of the notification rather than the date of receipt.
- Register and return upkeep — the register of workmen in Form XIII, muster roll in Form XVI, wage register in Form XVII, and the annual return in Form XXV.
Sections
Nine reference sections, arranged by the obligation they answer
Section 01
Section 02
Licences
Contract Labour (R&A) principal employer registration in Form I, contractor licensing in Form IV, Factories Act licensing and renewal cycles.
Section 03
POSH
Internal Committee constitution, quorum, inquiry procedure, the Section 21 annual report to the District Officer, and the training record an inspector will ask to see.
Section 04
Inspections
What an Inspector may lawfully require, the visit book entry, the document set to keep at the premises, and how a show-cause notice is properly answered.
Section 05
Compliance calendar
Month-by-month obligations across the financial year — remittances, returns, renewals, wage revisions and the annual report cycle.
Section 06
State rules
Where Haryana, Uttar Pradesh, Maharashtra, Karnataka and Telangana depart from Delhi practice — separate registrations, separate forms, separate due dates.
Section 07
About Stateman
How the firm is constituted, how field work is staffed, what we take on and what we decline.
Section 08
Contact and engagement
Office address in New Delhi, the documents to send with a first enquiry, and how an engagement is scoped.
Practice note
Compliance fails at handover
In our experience the majority of penalty notices arise not from evasion but from a licence that lapsed while the person who renewed it was serving notice. Name a successor custodian for every registration number in writing.
Three questions we are asked most often
- Does the contractor's licence cover us?CLRA, 1970 — ss. 7 and 12
It does not. Section 7 requires the principal employer to obtain registration in his own name in Form I; Section 12 requires the contractor to obtain a licence in Form IV. These are separate obligations answering to separate parties. Where the contractor short-pays wages, Section 21(4) permits recovery from the principal employer.
- Does registration follow us when we relocate?Delhi Shops and Establishments Act, 1954 — s. 5
No. Registration is bound to the premises stated in the certificate. A move from, say, Nehru Place to Okhla Phase III requires an amendment application on the Delhi Labour Department portal, ordinarily within fifteen days of the change, with the fresh rent agreement and revised employee count.
- We have never filed a POSH annual report. How serious is that?POSH Act, 2013 — ss. 4, 21 and 26
It is remediable but should not be left. The report to the District Officer falls due for each calendar year. Remediation begins with verifying that the Internal Committee is validly constituted under Section 4 — including the external member — and not with reconstructing minutes after the fact. Section 26 provides for a fine on contravention and, on repetition, cancellation of licence or registration.
Statutory references are to the principal Acts as in force in the National Capital Territory of Delhi. Verify the current text and any state amendment before relying on a section number in correspondence.
What the firm actually does
Roughly half of our approximately 140 staff are field personnel. They file at the labour offices, the EPFO regional office and the ESIC branch offices across the National Capital Region, and they attend inspections alongside the client rather than sending a file ahead and waiting for the outcome.
The recurring work is unglamorous and largely calendar-driven: licence renewals, coverage disputes, the twice-yearly variable dearness allowance revision in Delhi, registers of workmen that must agree with the muster roll, Labour Welfare Fund remittances, professional tax where the state levies it, and filings through the Shram Suvidha portal.
Where a client operates sites in Gurugram, Noida, Pune and Bengaluru, each state is tracked separately. The divergence between state rules is wider than most employers assume, and an assumption of uniformity is the single most expensive error we are asked to correct.
2015Practising since
140Staff, about half in the field
9States tracked for rule changes
2Delhi VDA revisions each year
If a notice has already arrived, the useful step is to read the file, not the library.
Send us the notice, the registration certificate and the last two years of returns. We will tell you what is actually at issue, what can be cured before the hearing date, and what cannot.