Besides, the ministry is also open to the idea of reducing the mandatory requirement of 90-day work threshold for any gig worker with a single aggregator or 120 days across multiple platforms within a financial year to qualify for benefits like health, life, and accident insurance under the Code on Social Security, 2020.
The ministry of labour and employment, on 31 December 2025, notified draft Rules for Code on Wages, Code on Social Security, the Industrial Relations Code and the Code on Occupational Safety, Health and Working Conditions and has sought comments from all stakeholders on the draft Rules within 30-45 days after which the final Rules will be notified.
This means all Codes will become effective latest from February 14 but since this is the last quarter of a financial year, the ministry has received multiple suggestions for rolling out the provisions of the Codes from 1 April, 2026.
The four Codes were implemented on 21 November, 2025 but will become operational once the final Rules are notified unless the government separately notifies the date of Codes becoming effective.
Giving a boost to formal employment creation in the country, the ministry of labour and employment’s Scheme to Promote Registration of Employers/Employees (SPREE) rolled out last year has seen 1.03 crore new employees registered under the Employees’ State Insurance Corporation (ESIC).
The SPREE is operational for the period from July 1, 2025 to January 31, 2026.The scheme offers a one-time opportunity for employers and employees who may have been inadvertently left out from ESI coverage to register without concern for retrospective coverage or punitive action.
“Till January 11, 2026, the number of new employers and new employees registered under the scheme was 1.17 lakh and 1.03 crore, respectively,” a source said.
Further, under the many recent reforms of the Employees’ Provident Fund Organisation, the ministry has allowed withdrawal of up to 75% of the provident fund corpus while retaining 25% as the minimum corpus that needs to be maintained with the retirement fund body.