INDIA · STATE · WORKING TIME
Working hours under the Gujarat Shops and Establishments Act
What the Shops and Establishments Act applicable in Gujarat sets for daily and weekly hours, spread-over, rest intervals, overtime and night-shift work — the rules that govern employers in Ahmedabad, GIFT City Gandhinagar, Surat. Every value below links to the source it was verified against.
- Governing Act
- Gujarat Shops and Establishments (Regulation of Employment and Conditions of Service) Act, 2019 (Act 4 of 2019), as amended by the Amendment Act, 2026 (Bill 1 of 2026, replacing Ordinance 3 of 2025) — deemed in force from 16 December 2025. Applies to shops and establishments with 20 or more workers (s.1(3), raised from 10)prsindia.org ↗
- Maximum daily hours
- 10 hours in any day (s.12, raised from 9 by the 2025 Ordinance / 2026 Act). The Inspector may relax hours or the weekly holiday for urgent work (s.12 proviso)prsindia.org ↗
- Maximum weekly hours
- 48 hours in a week (s.12, unamended)nlcbharat.org ↗
- Spread-over limit
- 10.5 hours in any day; 12 hours for intermittent or urgent work (s.14, unamended)nlcbharat.org ↗
- Rest interval
- At least 30 minutes, and no continuous work beyond 6 hours before it (s.12 — the amendment replaced “five hours” with “six hours”)prsindia.org ↗
- Overtime rate
- Twice the ordinary rate of wages for work beyond 10 hours a day or 48 hours a week (s.15; the daily trigger was raised from 9 to 10 hours by the amendment). Work on a rest day is also paid at 2× (s.16(5))prsindia.org ↗
- Overtime cap
- 144 hours in any period of three months (s.15, raised from 125 by the 2025 Ordinance / 2026 Act)prsindia.org ↗
- Weekly off
- At least 24 consecutive hours of rest each week; establishments may operate all seven days (s.16(2)). A denied weekly holiday must be compensated within two months (s.16(3)); every worker is allowed a paid weekly holiday (s.18(1))nlcbharat.org ↗
- Women on night shifts
- Permitted 9pm–6am with the woman's consent where the employer provides a rest room, night crèche, ladies' toilet, protection of dignity and safety, POSH protection and door-to-door transport (s.13(2) proviso as substituted by the amendment — previously needed an Inspector's order). New s.13(3) lets the State prohibit or regulate night work by area. Rules 2020 r.11 takes consent in Form Jprsindia.org ↗
- IT/ITES exemption
- Notification GHR/2024/19/LED/TGS/e-file/11/2023/2453/M.3 of 5 February 2024 (under the s.4(1) proviso) disapplied ss.12 (hours of work) and 14 (spread-over) for IT, ITeS and financial services establishments for two years from Gazette publication, subject to the rest of the Act. That period ran out around February 2026 and no renewal was found; the sector exemption should be treated as lapsed unless a fresh notification surfacesdatocms-assets.com ↗
Notes on Gujarat
- →The 2025 Ordinance was replaced by the Amendment Act, 2026 (passed 17 February 2026, Gazette notification 27 February 2026 per Khaitan & Co; Act number not verified). The amendment text in the Bill is identical to the Ordinance.
- →No GIFT City- or IFSC-specific exemption under the Shops and Establishments Act was found. GIFT City firms were covered, if at all, by the 2024 IT/ITeS and financial-services notification, now apparently expired.
- →The Gujarat Ease of Doing Business Bill, 2026 (Bill 27 of 2026, passed September 2026) removes closing-hour restrictions so shops, malls and restaurants may operate 24x7; it commences on a date to be notified and leaves working-hour rules untouched. Not yet verified as in force.
- →Draft amendment to Rules 2020 r.11 (June 2026, objections to 11 July 2026) would add conditions for women on nights — minimum three women per shift, GPS-tracked transport, driver police verification, CCTV, Form J-1 self-declaration. Final notification not found.
- →Gujarat notified its OSH and Working Conditions Rules on 6 June 2025 (Gazette 12 June 2025) and the OSH Code was brought into force centrally on 21 November 2025, which prescribes an 8-hour normal day; the 10-hour state figure may conflict. Take advice.
- →The brief's leads were slightly off: women's night work is s.13(2), spread-over s.14, overtime s.15, weekly rest s.16 — not ss.13–16 as listed.
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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