Working time
How many working hours are legal per week in India?
The general statutory ceiling is 48 hours per week and 9 hours per day. That limit comes from the Factories Act, 1948 for factories and from each state's Shops and Establishments Act for offices, IT companies and agencies — where daily limits are typically 8 to 9 hours. Work beyond the ceiling is overtime and must be paid at twice the ordinary rate.
There is no single national working-hours law in India. Factories are governed by the Factories Act, 1948, which sets 48 hours a week and 9 hours a day, with a rest interval after no more than 5 hours of continuous work and a spread-over limit that caps the total daily window including breaks. Offices, IT companies, agencies and shops are governed instead by the Shops and Establishments Act of the state they operate in — which is why the daily limit differs between Karnataka, Maharashtra, Tamil Nadu and the rest.
The Occupational Safety, Health and Working Conditions Code, 2020 consolidates these provisions and retains the 48-hour weekly ceiling, with daily hours prescribed by rules. Its implementation has been staged across states, so the operative source for most employers today remains their state Act read alongside the Code's notified provisions.
Two points are commonly misunderstood. First, 48 hours is the outer statutory boundary, not the norm — most Indian IT employers contract for 40 to 45 hours, and the contract binds them even though the statute would allow more. Second, hours beyond the ceiling are not simply permitted with extra pay: overtime itself is capped, commonly in the range of 50 to 75 hours per quarter depending on state and sector, and exceeding that cap is a contravention regardless of what was paid.
For multi-state employers the practical answer is that you have as many working-hours rules as you have states of establishment, and the record you keep has to satisfy the strictest of them.
Where this comes from
- §Factories Act, 1948 — sections 51 (weekly hours), 54 (daily hours), 55 (intervals for rest), 56 (spread-over)
- §State Shops and Establishments Acts — daily and weekly hours, varies by state
- §Occupational Safety, Health and Working Conditions Code, 2020 — working hours and overtime provisions
General information, current to August 2026, not legal advice. Labour rules vary by state and the Labour Codes continue to roll out — confirm your position with your compliance advisor before acting.
How Workclave handles this
Workclave records every work session with its start, end and breaks, so weekly and daily totals are computed rather than reconstructed — and a person approaching a daily or weekly ceiling is visible before the week closes, not after.
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