In today’s digital era, the increasing use of digital devices and widespread remote work set-ups have blurred the lines between the professional workspace and personal lives of employees. Employees are mostly engaged with their digital devices for professional commitment, even post their prescribed working hours, either by attending virtual calls or phone calls, responding to emails, attending official meetings or any kind of official communication incidental to their employment. Such an ‘always-on’ culture has been normalised by the people, which not only affects the required work-life balance but also hampers one’s overall well-being.
After the introduction of the Right to Disconnect Bill by the State of Kerala (“Kerala Bill”) for the private sector employees, a private member’s Bill titled ‘Right to Disconnect Bill, 2025’ (“Bill”) has also been introduced in the Lok Sabha on December 5,2025, covering employees across the country with an aim to establish an Employees’ Welfare Authority to confer the right on every employee to disconnect from work related telephone calls and e-mails beyond work hours and on holidays and right to refuse to answer calls and e-mails outside work hours and for all matters connected therewith or incidental thereto.
While Kerala’s Bill focuses primarily on the employees working in the State of Kerala, this national development proposes to build a statutory framework for the entire workforce, ensuring employees disengage themselves from their work and work-related communications once they have completed their fixed working hours.While this concept is prevalent in other Western countries such as Belgium, France, Ireland and Australia, India now joins other jurisdictions to explore such an initiative as legislation under the Indian law framework. The introduction of such a Bill is not merely a workplace reform but a fundamental human right to live with dignity, tying itself to Article 21 of the Indian Constitution.
Key Provisions of the Bill:
1. Applicability of the Bill:
This Bill is applicable to all employees, whether engaged with a company or a society, who are engaged in roles where they do not get a ‘break’ from their digitised professional commitments even after official working hours.
2. Definition of “Right to Disconnect”
Under the Bill, ‘right to disconnect’ means that while the employer may contact the worker after work hours, the employee is not obliged to reply and shall have the right to refuse to answer such calls.
The intention behind such a provision is to statutorily define and safeguard the employees' right to disconnect, which entails abstaining from all professional activities communicated by the employer after their working hours.
3. Exemption from disciplinary action
The Bill also prohibits an employer from taking any disciplinary action due to any reason during the employment on the grounds that the employee exercises the right to disconnect and refuses to answer calls or messages out of work hours.
4. Constitution of the Employees’ Welfare Authority
A key feature of the Bill is the introduction of an ‘Employees’ Welfare Authority’ (“Authority”) that shall discharge functions to ensure and promote employee welfare by adopting a nationwide framework for out-of-work arrangements. The Authority shall also draft a ‘charter’ enlisting the terms and conditions to be negotiated between the employer and the employee within one year of its constitution. The Bill also highlights a significant attempt by the government to undertake a comprehensive ‘baseline’ study to collect data on how the employees are using the digital devices outside their working hours, placing responsibility on the government as well to study, monitor and guide the workplace practices adopted by the organisations.
5. Individual Charters/Policies
Every company or society with more than ten (10) employees shall draft their individual charters/policies after consultations and negotiations with employees, unions and their representatives, at regular intervals, to decide and specify detailed out-of-work hours, consider diverse work cultures and requirements of different entities and individual employees, their competitive needs and industry practices, when and how to contact them during out-of-work hours and holidays and other permissible exemptions. Every employee holds the right not to be contacted for any work-related communication outside of the working hours, which have been mutually agreed upon between the employer and the employee. The Bill further mandates the framing of such policies for employees working remotely or from home or who are involved in teleworking, thereby expanding the scope of the charters/policies.
6. Overtime payment for out-of-work hours
The Bill mentions that if employees volunteer to respond and work beyond the working hours, then he/she must be paid overtime at the ‘normal wage rate’ and not be devoid of this entitlement in any case
7. Employee Welfare Committees, Digital Detox Centres and other welfare measures
Every company and society is required to constitute an ‘Employee Welfare Committee’ consisting of its employees to assist and support periodical negotiations among employers and employees relating to terms and conditions of outside working hours.
Other welfare measures recommended in the Bill, to be adopted by the organisations, include –
i. undertaking sensitisation and awareness sessions on responsible usage of the digital and communication tools beyond the working hours to maintain work-life balance;
ii. providing and promoting counselling services to employees to help them maintain better work-life standards by the appropriate government;
iii. setting up digital detox centres by the appropriate government that provide digital detox counselling services promoting reasonable usage of the digital tools;
iv. submission of annual reports once every year providing a summary of all the activities and measures undertaken by the organisation; and
v. Punitive measures
The Bill further dictates serious penalties; if any of the out-of-work conditions are not mentioned in the Charter for its employees, including remote working employees, or in case of non-adherence to any of its provisions, the organizations will be liable to pay a penalty at the rate of ‘one per cent of total employees’ remuneration’, making the penal provisions quite stringent for all the organizations.
Anhad Law’s Perspective
Currently, this private member’s Bill is solely introduced in the Lok Sabha, which has drawn nationwide attention and may go through several changes before being passed and enacted as a law. While the Bill has immense potential to set up a reformative precedent at a national level by balancing productivity and efficiency in the workplace with the overall wellbeing of employees, several practical and operational concerns still exist within the Bill that need to be addressed.
First, the Bill is silent on the non-exclusion of certain industries and certain categories of employees under the Bill. Sectors such as healthcare, IT/ITES, legal services, journalism and media, emergency services and other professional services which are critical and time sensitive and which inherently demand round-the-clock operations cannot adopt an overarching implementation of the Bill. The exclusions for managerial, supervisory and other highly skilled staff are also not covered. The Bill, in its current form, does not explicitly include such exceptional circumstances and categories of employees and thus should be addressed in the corresponding rules or notifications of the Bill, once implemented. The uniform applicability of the Bill to all the employees across the country regardless of the sector or profession is practically not feasible and possible to implement.
In continuation of the same gap in the Bill, the absence of a minimum employee threshold for its effective applicability is an area of concern. Unlike several western jurisdictions, the Bill does not specify how large or small an organisation must be for the law to apply. For instance, in France, the right to disconnect is only applicable to companies with more than 50 employees; in Belgium, its applicability is to companies with 20 or more employees, and in Australia, it applies to businesses with more than 15 employees. These thresholds are not arbitrary but instead included to ensure that the law is both feasible and proportionate. Larger organisations have higher employee counts and greater capacity and flexibility to adopt a more rigid structure and effectively perform in the industry. However, for smaller organisations, it will be difficult to operate with lean teams where flexibility and after-office-hours work might be essential for day-to-day functioning. Applying such a blanket rule to all organisations, regardless of size, could unintentionally burden small setups in India. The Bill does mention the threshold for the companies or societies with less than ten (10) employees to negotiate and draft charters and policies for themselves; however, limiting the threshold only with respect to the drafting of policies does not suffice.
Taking reference from the recently released Kerala Bill, the definition of the ‘right to disconnect’ in Kerala Bill was much broader and clearer than the definition used in the central Bill introduced in the Lok Sabha. To point out specifically, the definition in the Kerala Bill, which included ‘any communication made by the employer or any of its delegates’, extends the scope of the definition. The current definition only covers the right of the employee against the employer and not any of its representatives. Thus, restricting the core purpose of the Bill.
Similarly, Kerala’s Bill has again provided elaborate conditions which could be considered as disciplinary actions by the employer if the employee exercises his right to disconnect, such as dismissal, demotion, withholding, withdrawing or reducing benefits that the employee is entitled to receive otherwise, making detrimental changes in the conditions of his employment or withholding any kind of job training which other employees are entitled to receive. No such definition or explanation is provided in the Bill introduced in the Lok Sabha, keeping the ambit of disciplinary action taken by the employers ambiguous.
One of the most important issues is the payment of overtime at the ‘normal wage rate’, which is contrary to the existing labour laws/codes that mandate overtime payment made at ‘twice the normal wage rate’. This will further create legal inconsistency, adding to confusions and disputes.
Further, the quantum of penalty, which equals one per cent of total employees’ remuneration, is significantly high and practically non-feasible.
Lastly, the Bill is also silent on peculiar practical and procedural details which are quite sensitive for effective implementation, such as the manner in which the negotiations will take place, the details regarding the constitution of employee welfare authorities, committees and digital detox centres, any grievance redressal mechanism in case of non-compliance or any disputes raised by employees who face retaliation or repeated out-of-work hours communication (unlike Kerala’s Bill), and whether the states will be allowed to make any exemptions through their corresponding rules. The Bill should also consider the employees’ role and level of responsibility, how the employment agreement was drafted, in what circumstances and how disruptive it was to employees, amongst other criteria. The Bill further does not provide any guidance on the global workforce or companies operating in multiple time zones. Such aspects are required to be effectively incorporated in the Bill to make it more transparent and consistent with the changing needs of the workplace. We understand the need and the affirmative intent of the Bill; however, for smooth implementation, the above-discussed and other related gaps should be seriously considered to make the Bill more workplace-friendly.
