India: Contract of Employment

Payroll in the UAE carries a weight that many business owners underestimate until something goes wrong. A late salary transfer or a rejected file isn't just an internal issue. It's a compliance event that MoHRE (Ministry of Human Resources and Emiratisation) tracks and acts on. Every employer running payroll here has to route wages through the Wage Protection System. Getting that process right consistently, month after month, matters just as much as getting it right once.

India's workforce has undergone a significant transformation over the last decade, driven by the rapid growth of digital platforms, app-based services, and independent contracting. Food delivery executives, ride-hailing drivers, freelance professionals, home-service providers, and numerous other workers now operate outside the traditional employer-employee relationship.

Strong corporate governance extends beyond financial reporting to encompass employment-related risks and compliance. As India's employment laws evolve with new Labour Codes, organizations must implement robust governance practices that promote legal compliance, ethical decision-making, and workplace accountability to reduce disputes and strengthen business resilience.

This newsletter provides a curated overview of significant Supreme Court judgments, High Court judgments, regulatory developments in Indian labour and employment law and a few foreign developments relevant...

The consolidation of India’s labour laws into four Labour Codes i.e, the Code on Wages, 2019; Code on Social Security, 2020; Occupational Safety, Health and Working Conditions Code, 2020; and Industrial Relations Code...

The Supreme Court examined the validity of Haryana Government's 2014 notifications that sought to regularize ad hoc employees, addressing the critical question of whether regularization without public advertisement violates principles of fair employment. The judgment distinguishes between employees appointed against sanctioned posts with proper qualifications versus those regularized arbitrarily based on length of service alone.

In the competitive economy, businesses generally go to great lengths to protect their intellectual property, clients and specialised internal processes.

While many countries modernised and merged their labour laws over the past few decades, India continued operating under an old and scattered framework of 29 Central labour Acts.

In Hamsaanandini Nanduri v Union of India, the Supreme Court examined whether adoptive mothers could be denied maternity benefit merely because the adopted child was older than three months. The challenge was first mounted against the Maternity Benefit Act, 1961 (“the Act”), but after the Code on Social Security, 2020 (“the Code”) came into force on November 21, 2025, the Court treated the Code as the operative provision.