INDIA · STATE · WORKING TIME
Working hours under the West Bengal Shops and Establishments Act
What the Shops and Establishments Act applicable in West Bengal sets for daily and weekly hours, spread-over, rest intervals, overtime and night-shift work — the rules that govern employers in Kolkata. Every value below links to the source it was verified against.
- Governing Act
- West Bengal Shops and Establishments Act, 1963 (West Bengal Act XIII of 1963), read with Labour Department notifications of 29 May 2026 on flexible hours and 24x7 openingsimpliance.in ↗
- Maximum daily hours
- 8.5 hours (s.6(2) for shops, s.7(2) for establishments). The Act's proviso caps hours including overtime at 10 per day; notification I/775073/2026 exempts registered establishments from s.7(2)(i)–(ii) and instead caps hours including overtime at 12 per daylabour.wb.gov.in ↗
- Maximum weekly hours
- 48 hours (s.6(2) / s.7(2); restated as condition 1 of notification I/775073/2026)simpliance.in ↗
- Spread-over limit
- 10.5 hours in any day, work periods and rest intervals together (s.6(4) / s.7(4)). Notification I/775073/2026 defines spread-over as total working hours including overtime and sets it at 12 hours for exempted establishmentsSources disagree: The Act's s.7(4) 10.5-hour spread-over is not among the sub-sections the 2026 notification exempts from (only s.7(2)(i)–(ii)), so the 12-hour figure arguably governs only the daily-hours-plus-overtime ceilinglabour.wb.gov.in ↗
- Rest interval
- At least 1 hour, and no work period may exceed 5.5 hours before it (s.6(3) / s.7(3), as amended — originally 5 hours)simpliance.in ↗
- Overtime rate
- Twice the ordinary rate of wages (s.13, as amended — originally 1.5×). Work on a notified national holiday counts as overtime (s.13 Explanation)simpliance.in ↗
- Overtime cap
- 144 hours per quarter for registered shops and establishments (condition 3 of notification I/775073/2026, replacing the Act's 120 hours per year in s.6(2)(ii) / s.7(2)(ii))labour.wb.gov.in ↗
- Weekly off
- One and a half days: every shop/commercial establishment must close, and every employee be given as holiday, one day plus the half day next preceding or following it (s.5(1)). Notification I/775074/2026 lets registered establishments with 20+ staff open 24x7 for three years on condition of extra staff so each employee still gets the s.5(b) weekly holidaylabour.wb.gov.in ↗
- Women on night shifts
- Prohibited after 8pm in any shop or commercial establishment (s.10(b)); after 6pm in public-entertainment establishments (s.10(a)). s.10 is exemptable under s.4(2) (only ss.8 and 9 are not). The 24x7 notification requires transport for women working in shifts but does not itself lift s.10(b)simpliance.in ↗
- IT/ITES exemption
- No IT/ITES-specific notification found. West Bengal's 2026 exemptions are economy-wide: all registered shops and establishments get the 12-hour/144-hour regime, and those with 20+ staff may open 24x7 for three yearslabour.wb.gov.in ↗
Notes on West Bengal
- →Notification I/775073/2026 (29 May 2026) is worded as an exemption from s.7(2)(i)–(ii) only — the establishments section — even though it is addressed to 'shops and establishments'. Shops governed by s.6 may technically remain on the 10-hour/120-hour-per-year cap. Take advice.
- →Notification I/775074/2026 (24x7 opening) runs for three years from Gazette publication; the Gazette date was not verified. Conditions include appointment letters, a daily holiday roster on display, an ICC under the POSH Act and transport for women on shifts; breach suspends the permission.
- →Labour Department notification I/97/2025 (3 December 2025) reportedly allows case-by-case exemption from s.10(b) for women on night shifts (7pm–6am) subject to employer safety arrangements. The hosted PDF could not be read, so it is not relied on above.
- →Draft West Bengal OSH and Working Conditions Rules, 2026 were published 13 July 2026 (objections closed 27 August 2026); no final notification found as of 24 October 2026, so the 1963 Act remains the operative state law.
- →The brief's section leads (s.8 overtime, s.9 spread-over, s.10 rest) were wrong: overtime is s.13, rest and spread-over are s.6(3)–(4)/s.7(3)–(4), s.10 is the women/young-persons night bar.
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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