Telangana Gig Workers’ Bill: A Breakthrough Or Another Stalled Effort?

Amid the growing clamour and heated debates around improving working conditions for gig workers, Telangana has released the draft Gig and Platform Workers (Registration, Social Security and Welfare) Bill, 2025. With this, the state now stands next to Rajasthan and Karnataka for tabling an expansive legal framework for gig economy workers, including ride-hailing drivers, delivery partners and others engaged in a range of new-age blue-collar jobs.

Telangana’s draft gig workers’ bill, now sent for public consultation, demands the setting up of a dedicated welfare board, mandates registration of workers and aggregators (Swiggy, Zomato, Rapido, et al), creates a transaction-linked social security fund, and attempts to regulate how platforms use automated decision systems, including ratings, pay deductions and deactivations.

As Telangana pushes this ambitious blueprint, a fundamental question looms — will this endeavour, if it sees the light of day, change the reality of gig workers, who are currently raising their voices for elementary needs like social security, better pay, and respectful termination, among other things?   

While we ponder the question together, let’s steal a glance at what the newly approved bill envisages:  

• The Bill proposes the establishment of the Telangana Gig & Platform Workers Welfare Board, with representatives from the government, gig workers, platforms, civil society, and technical experts.
• Mandatory registration: Aggregators must share their gig worker databases with the Board within a fixed period, while workers can also self-register.
• A welfare fund, the Telangana Gig and Platform Workers Social Security & Welfare Fund, is to be created. Platforms must contribute a 1%–2% welfare fee on every payout made to gig workers.
• Non-payment penalties: Aggregators that fail to pay the welfare fee may face up to one year in jail, a fine of up to INR 2 Lakh, or both.
• Data-sharing penalties: Refusing or failing to submit required data, returns or statements can lead to fines of up to INR 50,000.
• The Bill also mandates algorithmic transparency, requiring platforms to explain, in simple language, how automated systems decide assignments, pay, ratings, and terminations.
• Worker protection: Terminations cannot be arbitrary. Platforms must conduct “due enquiry” and give seven days’ notice before deactivation or termination.
• Safety obligations: Platforms must ensure a working environment that is ‘safe and without risk’, and comply with sector-specific safety standards.
• Grievance redressal: Platforms with more than a certain number of workers must set up an Internal Dispute Resolution Committee.

With that said, here’s what might not bode well for the implementation of the bill. 

Unique IDs May Not Be The Solution 

One of the key elements of the Bill is that it attempts to convert a dispersed, algorithm-driven labour market into something the state can clearly understand. For this, the state plans to have systematic registration of gig workers by assigning them unique IDs. Further, the bill proposes to set up Telangana Gig & Platform Workers Welfare Board and a welfare fund before outlining a set of rules and penalties. 

“The draft (Bill) sets out the scaffolding but leaves out critical design, sequencing and incentives for future rules. This gap between framework and functionality is where the law will live or die,” Harshit Prakash, a Delhi HC lawyer, tells Inc42. 

Prakash added that the Bill entrusts platforms with providing a full worker database within sixty days and updating it quarterly.

However, most of these gig workers operate across multiple platforms, and if a worker appears in multiple registries, if onboarding and exits are not timestamped and reconciled across platforms, the Board will have to deal with a set of conflicting records. 

As of now, the draft does not specify reconciliatory procedures for duplicate or conflicting records, nor cross-validation measures with central registries like e-Shram. 

It (Bill) mandates platforms for data but does not sufficiently empower the Board with audits, penalties targeted at data falsification, or independent channels to verify worker identity. 

The founder and president of Telangana Gig and Platform Workers Union (TGPWU), Shaik Salauddin, also sees challenges with universal registration, or Unique ID, which the Bill proposes to assign to every gig worker. 

Per Salauddin, it is difficult to create a unified, verified database without strong coordination, offline support and integration with systems like e-Shram.

An Ambitious Digital Ledger

The Welfare Fund Fee Verification System (WFFVS) is presented in the Bill as a major new feature. Its aim is straightforward, which is to create a digital record of every payment made to gig workers and every fee collected by platforms.

To make this possible, the WFFVS would need to connect with different platform systems, which may use their own methods for handling payments, time-stamps, commissions and settlements. 

Then, the draft Bill does not yet explain how long data will be stored, how workers’ dashboards will keep personal details protected, or who will have access to the raw payment records. It also does not spell out who will audit the system or how differences in data will be fixed if they appear. These are some of the areas where worker unions are seeking more clarity. 

Salauddin, in particular, has requested full details on how rides and orders are assigned, how factors like acceptance rates, cancellations and customer ratings are used, how surge pricing is set, and what leads to deactivation or reduced order flow.

“Every worker should receive a written explanation from the platform if they are deactivated or if their orders or scores drop,” he said, adding that unions want clear communication so that workers understand how platforms/aggregators make decisions.

To support this, he said, TGPWU has urged for an annual independent audit of the algorithms that companies submit to the Social Security Board. 

The union has also proposed a single state-level dashboard where workers can see their daily earnings, total commissions charged, cancellations by customers or platforms, and the time they spend waiting compared to earning. These steps will help workers get a clearer picture of how their work and payouts are calculated.

Focus On Gig Worker Welfare 

The Bill mandates that all platforms must contribute a 1%–2% welfare fee on every payout made to gig workers, which will go into the welfare fund created for gig workers. The said fund would be utilised for the welfare of the workers towards accidental death relief, marriage benefits, health benefits and others.

While a mandatory levy of 1%–2% on every gig payout may appear modest, platforms operate on tight incentive structures. 

Even a small additional cost could lead platforms to reduce incentives, rework commissions or pass the cost to customers, each of which directly affects a worker’s daily earnings. This matters because welfare benefits such as insurance or pensions are long-term and mediated through slow administrative channels, whereas cuts to incentives or commissions are felt immediately. 

In the past, when the Karnataka Gig Workers Welfare Bill was introduced in 2024, the Indian Federation of App-based Transport Workers (IFAT), a major union, had asked the government to remove the clause requiring workers to make individual financial contributions to the welfare fund, arguing that they were already under severe financial stress. 

Salauddin said a large section of gig workers are unsure about government schemes due to past experiences gone wrong, and any system that asks workers to pay into a fund without offering visible short-term benefits will face distrust. 

Safety and working conditions are the next key concerns. The Bill prohibits forced long hours, but doesn’t spell out how platforms must implement this in practice. 

According to Salauddin, real safety demands much more. He said platforms must enforce mandatory rest breaks after eight to ten hours of continuous work, and that summer conditions require specific protection, rest every two hours, water stations at partner restaurants and hubs, heat-stress alerts inside apps and reduced penalties when workers refuse orders during heat waves. 

He added that app-based fatigue detection should warn workers approaching unsafe limits and that accident insurance, with cashless emergency admission, must activate automatically during working hours. 

How Others Walked This Path

Telangana’s draft enters a field where other states have already attempted to regulate gig economy with mixed results.

Rajasthan was the first mover, with its Platform-Based Gig Workers (Registration and Welfare) Bill in 2023. The state created a dedicated Welfare Board and proposed a welfare fee (also 1–2%) collected through a central aggregator.

However, implementation slowed after a change in government, leaving most mechanisms, including the worker registry and the welfare fee collection system, in abyss. Industry pushback over data-sharing and compliance timelines also delayed the rollout.

Then, Karnataka introduced its gig workers’ welfare bill in 2024. It proposed a gig worker fund and sought to mandate contributions from both workers and platforms.

But unions strongly opposed workers’ contributions, arguing that workers already face unstable earnings and frequent debt cycles. The Bill went into consultation rounds and has stayed in limbo to date.

Now, a similar bill has been approved in Telangana. Will it see the light of day to change anything for India’s gig workers, or will it end up as another stalled effort?   

Edited by Shishir Parasher