A licence lapses on a date nobody diaried. An occupier leaves and the amendment is never filed. Connected load goes up after a new line, and the licence still shows the old horsepower. Nothing happens — until an inspector visits, an accident has to be reported, or an expansion approval stalls on a three-year-old default.
Transparian handles factory statutory compliance end to end: plan approval, registration and licensing, renewals and amendments, statutory registers and returns, contract labour on site, and representation before the factory inspectorate. For single plants and multi-state manufacturers across India.
Yes. The OSH Code came into force on 21 November 2025 and subsumes the Factories Act, 1948, with central rules notified in May 2026 — but each state must notify its own rules, and states are moving at very different speeds. Until yours does, your plant continues under the Factories Act and your state’s Factories Rules, read alongside the Code.
Into a single establishment registration under the Code, due within sixty days of applicability.
A safety committee at 250 workers, and a dedicated safety officer at 500.
Your existing licence, registers and filings stand in the meantime.
If you run plants in three states, you are currently managing three different transition timelines. We track notifications state by state and apply each change to your compliance calendar — not as a newsletter, as an update to your file.
Factories Act compliance is triggered at 10 or more workers with the aid of power, or 20 or more without, with certain hazardous processes covered regardless of headcount. Once you cross it, the sequence below applies everywhere in India. What changes state to state is the form numbers, the fees, and the dates.
| Requirement | What it covers | When |
|---|---|---|
| Approval of site, building and machinery layout plans | Drawings to scale showing site, elevations, ventilation, escape routes and machinery positions | Before construction; statutory approval clock typically 30–45 days |
| Registration and notice of occupation | Sections 6 and 7 — occupier and manager on record | Before commencing manufacturing |
| Grant of factory licence | Issued once plan approval and prerequisites are in place | Typically 30–45 days |
| Licence renewal | Fee based on worker count and connected horsepower | State-specified date, not the licence expiry date. Late fees usually accrue monthly and cap out |
Where States Differ — Maharashtra as an Example
A factory licence application in Maharashtra runs through the DISH online system: plan approval in Form 1 under Rule 3 of the Maharashtra Factories Rules, 1963, registration in Form 2, licence issued in Form 4, and the annual return in Form 27 by 1 February.
Beyond the factory inspectorate, a working plant also answers to pollution control, fire, the industrial development authority, boiler and explosives authorities where applicable, plus CLRA obligations for on-site contractors. We map all of it onto one calendar.
Layout plans prepared and submitted to the state inspectorate, queries resolved, approval secured, and the sequence run in the right order so your licence application is not waiting on a pollution consent nobody applied for.
Registration and notice of occupation, licence grant, and occupier and manager appointments correctly on record — with the documents an inspector will later ask for kept on file from day one.
Each plant's renewal date held to a diary in its own state, and every amendment trigger caught as it happens: name change, worker count crossing a fee slab, connected horsepower increase after new machinery, change of occupier or manager.
Every register your state's Factories Rules require kept current, annual returns filed on the state deadline, and acknowledgements held against each filing.
CLRA registration as principal employer, contractor licence verification, and monthly checking of contractor wage registers, challans and returns — because the liability lands on you, not on them.
Your file kept inspection-ready as a standing condition, 24-hour accident reporting, and any notice or prosecution taken through to documented closure.
Contract labour work runs alongside our vendor compliance services. Safety and environment obligations sit under EHS compliance services; wage, PF and ESI obligations for your own workforce under labour law compliance services.
The core of any factory compliance checklist. Form numbers vary by state; the records themselves do not.
Two failure modes account for most of what a factory compliance audit turns up: registers that exist but stopped being updated after a shift pattern or wage revision changed, and statutory testing certificates that expired with no forward diary on the next due date.
Penalties under the Factories Act and the OSH Code run from fines into imprisonment, and rise sharply where a contravention causes injury. Licences can be suspended or cancelled on repeat default.
The real cost is usually elsewhere: the expansion approval that stalls on an unresolved prosecution, the downgrade on a customer’s supplier scorecard, the insurance claim complicated by an unfiled accident notice, or the two months your plant head spends reconstructing records instead of running the plant.
And the liability is personal — the occupier and the manager are named individuals under the Act, not the company.
Day 1
Licence review against what each plant runs today
Day 2
Gap audit — plan approval, licence, registers, certificates, contractor documents
Day 3
Remediation, including defaults regularised with the authority
Day 4
Running the calendar, with your sign-off before filing
Day 5
Tracking OSH Code notifications state by state
Final sign-off on every filing, and any disclosure reaching your board or a regulator.
The tracking, the record and the audit trail behind it.
❌ Treating renewal as due on the licence expiry date
rather than the date your state’s rules set.
❌ Applying one state’s filing calendar
to a plant in another.
❌ Adding machinery and never amending the connected horsepower.
❌ An occupier who left two years ago
still on record.
❌Testing certificates for hoists and pressure vessels expiring with no forward diary.
❌Collecting a contractor’s licence copy once and calling it verification.
Two decades of plan approvals, licence grants, inspections and notice closures, with direct department liaison in the states we file in.
We come from accounting rather than staffing, so contractor payments and statutory dues reconcile to your books instead of sitting in a separate compliance file.
Factory licence, contract labour, EHS and payroll compliance are handled by one team, because an inspection never respects the boundary between them.
Auto component and engineering units, food, pharma and chemical plants carrying hazardous classification, new plants where plan approval sequencing decides the commissioning date, and multi-state manufacturers running four or five units each on a different renewal calendar.
The state factory inspectorate — the Chief Inspector of Factories or the state directorate of industrial safety and health, depending on the state. Plan approval, registration, licensing, renewals and annual returns all route through it, in most states through an online portal.
Approved layout plans, the registration application, ownership or lease proof (or industrial development authority allotment letter), incorporation documents and the board resolution appointing the occupier, machinery list with connected load, worker particulars, fee challan and pollution control consent. Hazardous processes attract additional requirements.
On the date your state's rules specify, which is usually not the licence expiry date — Maharashtra, for example, sets it at 31 October each year, with additional fees accruing monthly after that. Several states allow renewal for multiple years at a time, which is worth taking for stable operations.
Typically 30–45 days from a complete application. Incomplete drawings and unresolved queries are what actually extend it.
Eventually. The OSH Code subsumes it and central rules were notified in May 2026, but until your state notifies its own rules, the Factories Act and your state's Factories Rules continue to govern.
The prescribed intimation form in your state, on the change. A change in factory name, worker count or connected horsepower requires a licence amendment, with any fee difference payable.
You are, as principal employer. Contract labour compliance in factories is where most plants carry unrecognised exposure.
Yes — multi-state manufacturers are a large part of what we do. Each plant gets its own state calendar, with a single consolidated view across all of them.
Applicability mapping and a gap audit take two to three weeks. Most establishments reach a defensible position within a quarter, with older defaults regularised alongside.
Most plants we audit are compliant on paper and exposed in two or three specific places — an unfiled amendment, an expired testing certificate, a contractor nobody verified. We will run a free factory compliance audit, tell you where those places are, and give you a prioritised plan before you commit to anything.
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