Apprentices Act Compliance India 2026: Stipend and Portal Filings

If your company sat outside the Apprentices Act in 2024, it is probably inside it now. On 3 September 2025 the Ministry of Skill Development and Entrepreneurship (MSDE) issued notification S.O. 4072(E), which scrapped the old 1999 schedule of industries and tied the Act’s applicability to the National Industrial Classification (NIC), 2008. Eight days later the prescribed stipend rose by roughly a third. In a single fortnight, apprentices act compliance india stopped being a factory-sector topic.

Here is what an establishment has to do now, and what a shortfall costs.

Who does apprentices act compliance india now cover?

The 1999 industry list is gone.

The Act and the Apprenticeship Rules, 1992 only ever applied to notified industries, and that list leaned towards manufacturing and traditional trades. S.O. 4072(E) replaced it with NIC 2008 — the classification the whole economy is already coded under. Coverage now reaches agriculture, mining, manufacturing, construction, retail, the service economy — IT and ITeS, telecom, banking, insurance, healthcare, education, hospitality — and household work.

Thirty workers is the line that makes it obligatory.

Under Rule 7B(1), as amended in 2019, an employer with four or more workers is eligible to engage apprentices; engagement becomes obligatory at thirty or more. Rule 7B(2) matters as much: strength is the average across the preceding financial year, not a headcount on the day someone asks, and it includes contractual staff. Read it alongside your statutory compliance checklist for Indian employers, next to other headcount-triggered duties such as creche compliance.

How many apprentices does your establishment have to engage?

The band is 2.5 to 15 per cent of average strength.

Rule 7B(3) requires an establishment to engage apprentices in a band of 2.5 per cent to 15 per cent of total strength within a financial year. The floor, not the ceiling, is your obligation. In no month should apprentices fall below 2 per cent, and the year is measured in apprentice-months rather than bodies on a given date. Since contractual personnel count towards the base, it helps to understand how contract staffing works in India before you fix a target.

Five per cent of the band is now reserved.

The Apprenticeship (Amendment) Rules, 2025 added a sub-quota: a minimum of 5 per cent of the band is reserved for fresher apprentices and skill certificate holder apprentices. Unfilled places go to other categories only with the Apprenticeship Adviser’s approval. This is where most plans fail their first audit — the headline percentage looks satisfied while the reserved slice sits empty.

Maharashtra runs a different ceiling.

Maharashtra Act 17 of 2018 inserted its own sub-section into section 8, setting a minimum of 2.5 per cent and a maximum of 25 per cent of total strength, expressly including contractual, daily wage and third-party personnel. Your Maharashtra sites do not share the central ceiling.

What is the minimum stipend you must pay in 2026?

G.S.R. 610(E) reset every category.

Gazette notification G.S.R. 610(E), dated 3 September 2025 and published on 11 September 2025, notified the Apprenticeship (Amendment) Rules, 2025 after the 38th meeting of the Central Apprenticeship Council. The prescribed minimum monthly stipend moved as follows:

• Class 5 to class 9 pass-outs: INR 5,000 to INR 6,800
• Class 10 pass-outs: INR 6,000 to INR 8,200
• Class 12 pass-outs: INR 7,000 to INR 9,600
• National or State Certificate holders: INR 7,000 to INR 9,600
• Technician (vocational) apprentices and diploma-institution sandwich students: INR 7,000 to INR 9,600
• Technician apprentices, diploma holders and degree-institution sandwich students: INR 8,000 to INR 10,900
• Graduate and degree apprentices, degree holders in any stream: INR 9,000 to INR 12,300

The band moved from INR 5,000–9,000 to INR 6,800–12,300, and rises 10 per cent in the second year of training and a further 15 per cent in the third. Rule 11(3) requires payment by the tenth day of the following month, into the apprentice’s bank account; section 13(2) bars piece-work pay and any output bonus or incentive scheme. You may pay above the minimum, and MSDE encourages it.

Which date actually starts your obligation to pay the revised stipend?

11 September 2025, not 1 April 2026.

A date of 1 April 2026 is circulating in HR forums and being read as the start of the new rates. It is not. That date relates to the Boards of Apprenticeship Training implementing the revised figures for the Ministry of Education’s 50 per cent share under the National Apprenticeship Training Scheme. The revised minimum has been payable under MSDE’s rules since 11 September 2025, so paying the old rate in between is a shortfall, not a grace period.

Apprentices already in training were swept in.

An MSDE office memorandum dated 15 October 2025 (File No. DGT-36/1/2021-AP) confirmed that apprentices whose training began before 11 September 2025 and were still training on that date get the revised rate from that date. Those contracts carry two rates, and the portal generates the addendum for the establishment to accept from its login. If nobody has accepted them, your arrears are open.

How much of the stipend does the government pay?

A share, never the whole obligation.

Under the National Apprenticeship Promotion Scheme (NAPS), the government pays 25 per cent of the prescribed stipend, capped at INR 1,500 per apprentice per month, by Direct Benefit Transfer into the apprentice’s bank account; the employer pays the rest. NAPS also supports 50 per cent of basic training cost, up to INR 7,500 per fresher apprentice, once. Under the National Apprenticeship Training Scheme (NATS) — graduate, technician and sandwich apprentices, run by the Ministry of Education through the Boards of Apprenticeship Training — the share is 50 per cent. Neither reduces your duty to pay the full minimum on time.

What do you have to file on the apprenticeship portal, and by when?

The contract clock is seven days, not thirty.

Section 4(1) requires a written contract before anyone is engaged, and section 4(2) deems training to have commenced on the contract date. Section 4(4) then requires the contract details to be entered on the portal-site within seven days for verification and registration. The thirty-day figure most compliance notes still quote applied only “until a portal-site is developed by the Central Government” — the portal exists, so seven days is the live deadline. The Apprenticeship Adviser conveys objections within fifteen days under section 4(4A) and registers the contract within thirty days under section 4(4B). The 2025 Rules also prescribe a revised contract format, so old templates need replacing.

The quarterly plan is due on the fifteenth.

Rule 7B(5) requires every employer to disclose its intention to engage apprentices, in designated and optional trades, on the portal each quarter. The deployment plan, with the declared manpower strength of the establishment, is posted by:

• 15 April — for 1 April to 30 June
• 15 July — for 1 July to 30 September
• 15 October — for 1 October to 31 December
• 15 January — for 1 January to 31 March

Section 19 separately requires records of each apprentice’s training progress in the prescribed form, and trade-wise requirement and engagement to be given on the portal. Establishment registration on apprenticeshipindia.gov.in comes first; contracts follow.

What else did the 2025 amendment change?

Inclusion, tenure limits and delivery mode.

Training places are now reserved for persons with benchmark disabilities in line with the Rights of Persons with Disabilities Act, 2016. A person may do a maximum of two apprenticeship trainings, the second in a different trade after a one-year gap — waived where the employer terminated the first, and carrying no government stipend share. A three-month cooling-off period applies to an apprentice who voluntarily terminates training, but not to female candidates. “Degree Apprenticeship” now means a course with apprenticeship integrated into the curriculum. Most usefully for services businesses, the rules permit on-site, online and hybrid delivery and allow deployment at a client site — which makes the model workable for firms recruiting the cohort they hire for IT jobs in Chennai for freshers.

Do apprentices get PF, ESI and gratuity?

The exemption belongs to the statute, not the job title.

Section 18 says an apprentice training in a designated trade is a trainee and not a worker, and that labour law does not apply. So no EPF, no ESI, no gratuity and no statutory bonus — for an apprentice engaged under the Apprentices Act, 1961. Change nothing about the work and simply call the person a “trainee” outside the Act, or engage them under your model standing orders, and the exclusion does not travel with them; courts look at the substance of the arrangement rather than the label, and the contributions follow.

The labour codes made the registered contract the proof.

The four labour codes came into force on 21 November 2025, and apprentices engaged under the Apprentices Act remain outside their employee definitions. A registered contract on the portal — not an offer letter using the word trainee — is what carries the exemption, the same substance-over-form logic now applied to platform work, as our note on gig worker rights in India sets out. Apprentices act compliance india is therefore also how you keep the exemption you rely on. Section 15 still bars overtime without the Apprenticeship Adviser’s approval, and section 16 still makes you liable to compensate injury arising out of training.

Do you have to hire an apprentice after training ends?

You must have a policy, even though you need not hire.

Section 22(1) says every employer shall formulate its own policy for recruiting apprentices who complete training in its establishment. There is no duty to absorb anyone, but there is a duty to have a written policy — and very few HR teams have one on file. Section 22(2) is the exception: where the contract says the apprentice will serve after completion, the employer must offer suitable employment on the terms in the contract, which the Apprenticeship Adviser may revise if unreasonable.

What does getting apprentices act compliance india wrong cost?

A notice first, then a monthly meter.

Where an employer falls short on the number of apprentices, section 30(1) gives one month’s written notice from an authorised officer to explain it. Under section 30(1A), if the employer does not reply in time, or the officer is not satisfied after a hearing, the fine is INR 500 per shortfall of apprenticeship month for the first three months and INR 1,000 per month thereafter, until the seats are filled.

Procedural breaches are priced separately.

Section 30(2) sets a fine of INR 1,000 for every occurrence where an employer neglects or falsifies a return, obstructs an inspection, requires overtime without approval, uses an apprentice on work unconnected with the training, pays on piece-work, engages an unqualified person, or fails to carry out the terms of the contract. Section 31 sets a residual fine of INR 1,000 to INR 3,000, and disputes go to the Apprenticeship Adviser under section 20.

What should your HR team do before the next quarterly filing?

Eight things, in order.

1. Recompute average strength for the preceding financial year, contractual staff included.
2. Check whether that crosses thirty and whether NIC 2008 now puts your activity in scope.
3. Set the target at 2.5 to 15 per cent, sizing the 5 per cent fresher sub-quota separately.
4. Re-run stipends from 11 September 2025 against the revised minimums and quantify arrears.
5. Accept every pending contract addendum on the portal.
6. Move uploads to a seven-day service level and adopt the 2025 contract format.
7. Diarise 15 April, 15 July, 15 October and 15 January for the deployment plan.
8. Approve the section 22(1) policy and file it with your apprentices act compliance india records.

Frequently Asked Questions

Can we pay an apprentice more than the prescribed minimum?

Yes. The rates in the Apprenticeship (Amendment) Rules, 2025 are a floor and MSDE encourages paying above it. The only structures ruled out are piece-work and output bonus or incentive schemes, which section 13(2) prohibits whatever the amount.

Do contractual workers count towards the thirty-worker threshold?

Yes. Total strength includes contractual staff, measured as the average across the preceding financial year rather than on a single day. A firm with a small payroll and a large contractor bench can cross thirty without changing its own headcount.

We registered a contract twenty days after the apprentice joined. Is that a problem?

Yes. Section 4(4) requires contract details on the portal within seven days. The thirty-day period still quoted in many compliance notes applied only until the central portal existed. A late upload is a failure to carry out the statutory process, priced at INR 1,000 per occurrence under section 30(2).

Does an apprentice who leaves halfway have to wait before joining elsewhere?

Where the apprentice voluntarily terminates training, a three-month cooling-off period applies. It does not apply to female candidates. An apprentice terminated for misconduct or non-performance is debarred from reapplying at all.

Can apprentices be asked to work overtime during a delivery crunch?

Not on your own authority. Section 15(2) bars overtime except with the Apprenticeship Adviser’s approval, given only where it serves the training or the public interest. Doing it without approval is a separate offence under section 30(2), at INR 1,000 for every occurrence.

Does the 1 April 2026 date delay our liability for the revised stipend?

No. That date concerns the Boards of Apprenticeship Training implementing the revised figures for the Ministry of Education’s 50 per cent NATS share. Your obligation to pay the revised minimum runs from 11 September 2025, when G.S.R. 610(E) was published. The gap is arrears, not relief.

Image: interior of the Hebich Industrial Training Institute. Photo by Krishna Mohan, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.

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