The OSH Code 2020 and Factory CCTV: What Replaced the Factories Act

The Factories Act 1948 no longer governs your plant. It was repealed on 21 November 2025 when the OSH Code 2020 came into force, and the Central Rules followed on 8 May 2026. For cameras, the changes that matter are the factory threshold (20 workers with power) and the night-shift conditions for women, which in the Central Rules include CCTV on the way to toilets, washrooms and drinking water.

If you run a 200–1000 worker plant in Ludhiana, Coimbatore, Pune or Rajkot, nothing on your shop floor changed on that date. What changed is the statute an inspector-cum-facilitator quotes at you, the register formats, and the fact that women on the third shift are now permitted everywhere with conditions attached — conditions that a camera system is the cheapest way to evidence.

Key points

• The Factories Act 1948 is gone, not amended. The four Labour Codes were brought into force on 21 November 2025, and the OSH Code replaces 13 central labour laws including the Factories Act 1948, the Mines Act 1952 and the Contract Labour Act 1970 (Acuity Law). Any vendor page or blog still citing "Section 66 of the Factories Act" as live law is stale.
• The factory threshold moved up. Section 2(w) defines a "factory" as premises with 20 or more workers with power, or 40 or more without power, counted on any day of the preceding twelve months — up from 10/20 (OSH Code 2020). A proviso preserves any different number already fixed by a State law until that State amends it, so check your state before assuming you dropped out.
• Women can work nights anywhere in India now — with consent. Section 43 entitles women to employment in all establishments and permits work before 6 a.m. and beyond 7 p.m. "with their consent", subject to safety conditions the appropriate government prescribes (OSH Code 2020, s.43). The requirement that the consent be written comes from the Rules, not from Section 43 itself.
• The Central Rules 2026 put CCTV into the night-shift conditions, on a narrow scope. Rule 83 of the OSH (Central) Rules, 2026 (G.S.R. 345(E), 8 May 2026) requires written consent, pick-up and drop transport, a well-lit workplace and passages, toilets, washrooms and drinking water nearby with "closed-circuit television surveillance on the way to these facilities", displayed emergency numbers and POSH compliance where women work before 6 a.m. or after 7 p.m. (Gazette of India). The Central Rules bind central-sphere establishments, not a private factory, which follows its state's rules.
• The money at risk is real. Under Section 103, a contravention that results in an accident causing death carries imprisonment up to two years, or a fine not less than ₹5 lakh, or both; serious bodily injury carries up to one year, or ₹2–4 lakh. The general penalty in Section 94 is not less than ₹2 lakh, extending to ₹3 lakh (OSH Code 2020). A proviso to Section 103 lets the court direct that at least half the fine go to the victim or the legal heirs.
• Records consolidate and go electronic. Chapter VIII, Section 33 lets you keep the worker register — hours, rest days, wages, leave, overtime, attendance and dangerous occurrences — electronically, and file returns electronically to the inspector-cum-facilitator (OSH Code 2020).
• Inspections are being re-plumbed as web-based and randomised. Section 34(3) allows an inspection scheme providing for web-based inspection, electronic calling of information, and randomised selection of both the establishment and the inspector (OSH Code 2020). Evidence you can produce from a laptop is worth more than evidence in a cupboard.

Why half the internet still tells you the Factories Act applies

Because it did, for 77 years, and SEO decays slowly. The Codes were passed in 2020 and then sat un-notified for five years, so an enormous volume of consultant content was written in the "yet to be enforced" period and never updated.

Practical test before you trust any camera-compliance advice dated before December 2025: if it cites the Factories Act 1948 in the present tense, treat the legal reasoning as void even where the safety advice is sensible. We keep our own older Factories Act explainer up as history, clearly marked.

One nuance worth knowing: repeal of the central Act does not instantly vaporise the machinery built under it. Factories are administered by states, and state rules and licences under legacy law continue through the transition while each state notifies its own OSH rules. That transition is slower than the headlines suggest. On the KSK state tracker's February 2026 reading, Gujarat was the only state with final rules notified under all four Codes; Maharashtra and Tamil Nadu had finalised rules only under the Code on Wages, Karnataka under Wages and Industrial Relations, and Delhi under none (KSK state tracker). Uttar Pradesh, for one, published its OSH and Working Conditions Rules in the Gazette on 27 Aug 2026, so check your own state's status directly. Your operative rulebook is your state's OSH rules once notified, not the Central Rules, unless you are in a central-sphere establishment. Until your state notifies them, s.143(3) keeps rules and notifications made under the repealed Acts in force "to the extent they are not contrary to the provisions of this Code".

Old Act vs new Code: only the camera-relevant deltas

The night shift is where cameras stop being optional

Read Section 43 with rule 83 of the Central Rules and you get an employer duty shaped like this: consent in writing, safe pick-up and drop transport, a well-lit workplace and passages, toilets, washrooms and drinking water in proximity with CCTV "on the way to these facilities", emergency numbers displayed at the site and inside the vehicles, and POSH compliance. For a private factory, the State prescribes the conditions (s.2(1)(d)), and state texts can ask for more.

Be precise about what "mandatory" means here, because vendors overstate it in one direction and lawyers understate it in the other. The CCTV line in rule 83(d) attaches to the route to toilets, washrooms and drinking water where women work at night. It is not a general factory camera mandate, and it does not prescribe camera counts, resolution or retention. Several states already required night-shift CCTV in their pre-Code exemption orders — see which Indian states require CCTV for women's night shifts.

The owner's read: if a woman is hurt or harassed on your premises at 2 a.m. and you cannot show the gate, the corridor, the washroom approach and the pick-up point, you are arguing the "safe workplace" duty in Section 6 with no evidence. Consent forms alone will not carry you. Our night-shift CCTV and retention checklist covers the coverage map and how long to keep clips.

Note the direction of the camera. Washroom interiors, changing rooms and rest areas are never lawful to cover. Coverage is of the approach, not the facility.

Records, the 12-hour clock, and where footage earns its keep

The Central Rules put hard clocks on incident reporting: fatal accidents notified immediately; injuries that keep a worker off for 48 hours or more reported to the inspector-cum-facilitator within 12 hours after that 48-hour mark; and dangerous occurrences reported within 12 hours whether or not anyone was hurt (SCC Online).

Twelve hours is short. If your report is built from a supervisor's memory the next morning, it will be wrong in ways an inspector notices. Retained footage of the machine and the gangway is what turns a dangerous-occurrence report into something defensible — and it is the same footage that supports machine guarding and danger-zone claims.

Also useful: attendance, hours, overtime and dangerous-occurrence particulars now sit in the prescribed register under Section 33, keepable electronically. Overtime is payable at twice the ordinary rate of wages under Section 27. If your gate register and your camera timeline disagree by forty minutes a day across 300 workers, that gap is now easy for an inspector-cum-facilitator to pull electronically.

What the OSH Code does NOT require, and where cameras hurt you

Be clear-eyed, because this is where vendor blogs mislead.

• The Code does not require CCTV on your production lines. Nothing in the Code or the Central Rules obliges a factory to camera its presses, its dye house or its assembly line. Line coverage is an efficiency and theft decision, not a compliance one. Sell it to yourself on that basis or not at all.
• No standard here mandates a camera spec. The Rules say "closed-circuit television surveillance on the way to these facilities" and stop. There is no prescribed resolution, camera count, frame rate or national retention figure in the OSH Code or the Central Rules. Anyone quoting you a statutory camera specification is quoting a state condition, a tender term or their own product sheet.
• Cameras are not a defence to a guarding failure. Footage of a worker reaching into an unguarded nip point proves the nip point was unguarded. Under a regime where a death-linked contravention starts at ₹5 lakh, a camera that documents a known unfixed hazard is evidence against you. Fix the guard first, then film it.
• Recording is personal-data processing. The Digital Personal Data Protection Rules 2025 were published on 13 November 2025 with a phased runway. G.S.R. 843(E) of 13 Nov 2025 brings Sections 3 to 17 of the DPDP Act into force on 14 May 2027; only s.6(9), Consent Manager registration, starts earlier, in Nov 2026 (Gazette of India). Core obligations such as notices, purpose limitation and retention/erasure apply from 14 May 2027. Identifiable workers on camera are within scope — see DPDP and worker CCTV.
• Cameras cannot manufacture consent. Section 43 consent must be the woman's own and free. A workplace that is watched but where refusing the night shift costs you your line job fails the test regardless of how many cameras are up.
• Cameras do not fix transport. The single most common night-shift gap in mid-size plants is the last stretch from the gate to the bus stop or hostel. That is a vehicle-and-escort problem. A camera on that stretch records the incident; it does not prevent it.

What to do this quarter

1. Confirm whether your state has notified its OSH rules yet. Work to the state rules where they exist; where they do not, your state's existing factory rules and notifications stay in force to the extent they are not contrary to the Code (s.143(3)).
2. Complete or verify unified registration on Shram Suvidha in Form-I; the certificate is auto-generated if not issued within 7 days, so keep the acknowledgement.
3. If you run — or plan — women on nights, build the file: individual signed and dated consents, transport roster, lighting audit, helpline display photos, and the camera coverage map of gate, corridors, washroom approaches and pick-up point.
4. Move the worker register — attendance, hours, overtime, dangerous occurrences — into the prescribed electronic form and check it reconciles against your camera timeline.
5. Set a retention period you can actually defend under DPDP, write down why, and enforce it automatically.
6. Budget honestly. Night-shift-corridor coverage in a mid-size plant is a modest capital item next to a single ₹5 lakh floor penalty — the ranges are in what a factory camera AI system costs in India.

FAQ

Is the Factories Act 1948 still valid in India in 2026? No. It was repealed on 21 November 2025 when the OSH Code 2020 was brought into force, along with 12 other central labour laws. Rules and notifications made under it remain in force "to the extent they are not contrary to the provisions of this Code" (s.143(3)), so check your state's status before relying on either.

Does the OSH Code make CCTV compulsory in factories? Not for production generally. Rule 83(d) of the Central Rules 2026 asks for CCTV "on the way to" toilets, washrooms and drinking water where women work outside 6 a.m.–7 p.m., alongside written consent, transport, lighting and emergency numbers. The Central Rules bind central-sphere establishments; a private factory follows its state's night-shift conditions, and some states ask for wider coverage. Treat night-shift coverage as required, line coverage as a business choice.

What is the new factory threshold under the OSH Code? Twenty or more workers where a manufacturing process runs with the aid of power, or forty or more without power, counted on any day in the preceding twelve months. That is up from 10 and 20 under the old Act, though a proviso keeps a different state-fixed number in force in that state until it is amended.

Can women work night shifts in Indian factories now? Yes, anywhere in India, with their consent and the prescribed safety conditions in place. The Rules require that consent in writing. It must be voluntary and cannot be a condition of keeping the job. State rules add local detail, so read your state's OSH rules alongside Section 43.

How long should I keep factory CCTV footage under the new rules? The OSH Code and the Central Rules set no national retention figure for footage. State rules and legacy night-shift conditions typically ask for 30 to 90 days. Pick a period, document why, and delete on schedule — indefinite retention is now a DPDP exposure rather than extra safety.

Will camera evidence be used against me by an inspector? It can be. Footage showing a known hazard left unfixed strengthens a prosecution, and a contravention resulting in a death carries a fine of not less than ₹5 lakh under Section 103, with the court able to direct at least half of it to the heirs. The right sequence is to fix the hazard, then use cameras to prove it stays fixed, not to use cameras as a substitute for guarding.