INDIA · STATE · WORKING TIME
Working hours under the Maharashtra Shops and Establishments Act
What the Shops and Establishments Act applicable in Maharashtra sets for daily and weekly hours, spread-over, rest intervals, overtime and night-shift work — the rules that govern employers in Mumbai, Pune, Nagpur. Every value below links to the source it was verified against.
- Governing Act
- Maharashtra Shops and Establishments (Regulation of Employment and Conditions of Service) Act, 2017 (Mah. LXI of 2017), as amended by the Amendment Ordinance, 2025 (Mah. Ord. VIII of 2025) in force from 1 October 2025; replacement Bill (L.A. Bill LXXXIX of 2025) introduced 8 December 2025, deemed effective 1 October 2025prsindia.org ↗
- Maximum daily hours
- 10 hours in any day (s.12 — the 2025 Ordinance substituted “ten” for “nine” and deleted the proviso that allowed relaxation with the Facilitator's permission)prsindia.org ↗
- Maximum weekly hours
- 48 hours in any week (s.12, unamended by the 2025 Ordinance)prsindia.org ↗
- Spread-over limit
- 12 hours in any day (s.14 as substituted by the 2025 Ordinance; previously 10.5 hours, or 12 for intermittent or urgent work)prsindia.org ↗
- Rest interval
- At least 30 minutes, and no continuous work period may exceed 6 hours (s.12 — the 2025 Ordinance substituted “six” for “five”)prsindia.org ↗
- Overtime rate
- 2× the ordinary rate of wages for work beyond 9 hours a day or 48 hours a week (s.15). The Ordinance did not amend the 9-hour trigger, so hours 9 to 10 remain overtime-rated even though s.12 now permits a 10-hour dayprsindia.org ↗
- Overtime cap
- 144 hours in a period of three months (s.15, raised from 125 by the 2025 Ordinance)prsindia.org ↗
- Weekly off
- At least 24 consecutive hours of rest per week; establishments may open all seven days provided each worker gets it (s.16(1)(b)). Compensatory leave within two months if denied (s.16(1)(c)); work on the rest day paid at 2× (s.16(1)(e))prsindia.org ↗
- Women on night shifts
- Women may not work outside 7 a.m.–9:30 p.m. by default (s.13(2)); with her consent a woman may work 9:30 p.m.–7 a.m. where the employer provides prescribed protection of dignity, honour and safety, protection from sexual harassment and transport to the doorstep of her residence (s.13(2) proviso). State may further restrict by notification (s.13(3))prsindia.org ↗
- IT/ITES exemption
- Not verified — check your state rules
Notes on Maharashtra
- →Statutory text for unamended sections is cited from the 2017 Bill (L.A. Bill 54 of 2017) as published by PRS; the India Code consolidated PDF was unreachable at the time of research. Section numbering matches the Ordinance's references.
- →The 2025 Ordinance also raised the applicability threshold from 10 to 20 workers (ss.1(3), 6, 7). Whether L.A. Bill LXXXIX of 2025 has been passed and assented to was not verified — if the Ordinance lapsed without replacement, the pre-October-2025 figures (9 h/day, 10.5 h spread-over, 5 h continuous, 125 h/quarter) revive.
- →No IT/ITES-specific exemption notification was located. s.34 gives the State power to exempt any class of establishment by gazette notification; verify directly with the Labour Department before relying on a sector carve-out.
- →Notification of state rules under the OSH Code 2020 was not checked.
Verify before you rely on it. State rules are amended by notification, exemptions for IT/ITES establishments are often time-bound and renewed separately, and the Labour Codes continue to be brought into force state by state. This page records what we could verify against a named source at the time of writing — it is general information, not legal advice, and it does not replace reading your state's current rules or asking your compliance advisor.
Keeping to these limits in practice
Limits are only enforceable against a record. Workclave captures every work session with its start, stop and breaks, applies your workspace's shift and break rules, and produces the statutory attendance register from the same data — so daily, weekly and overtime totals are computed as work happens rather than reconstructed at month end. Multi-state employers can configure rules per workspace.
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