The Bihar Gig Workers Law: A bold step forward but a step back for trade unions

IN LATE JULY, THE BIHAR LEGISLATIVE ASSEMBLY passed the Bihar Platform Based Gig Workers (Registration, Social Security and Welfare) Act, 2025 (‘Bihar Act’) with little fanfare. The Bihar government is now the third state in the country, after Rajasthan and Karnataka, to officially notify a separate law for platform-based gig workers.

Unlike its sister legislations, the Bihar Act has attracted little to no scrutiny. This is a costly oversight since even as the legislation goes further than other state laws in securing workers’ rights, troublingly it introduces provisions that risk undermining the realisation of those very rights.

Statutory recognition of workers’ welfare rights

Unlike the Karnataka and Rajasthan Act which stop short of guaranteeing any minimum welfare rights and instead leave the design of welfare schemes for the government to evolve through rules, the Bihar Act directly grants workers statutory entitlements to accident compensation and maternity benefits. While one may debate the adequacy of these entitlements, their very inclusion in the principal Act marks a powerful step forward in itself.

The experience of the platform-work laws of Karnataka and Rajasthan underline the importance of this approach. In Karnataka, although the legislation has been enacted, the draft rules released for consultation do not adequately spell out workers’ welfare entitlements. Rajasthan fares even worse. Its rules have not been notified at all even after two years of passage of the parent act, rendering the law effectively in cold storage. In both states, the absence of operational clarity around social security entitlements has left workers in limbo. Without clear statutory provisions on worker entitlements, there is also a very real risk that these platform work laws will meet the same fate as the Building and Other Construction Workers Act (‘BoCWA’), wherein, as documented by the Comptroller and Auditor General of India, the funds collected through a cess have been systematically underutilised. The insertion of immediate legally binding entitlement in the Bihar Act is therefore a welcome measure.