Jammu and Kashmir Shops Act 2025: all sizes covered

Three officers run the new Jammu and Kashmir Shops and Establishments Act, 2025: the Inspector cum Facilitator for your area, the Assistant Labour Commissioner above him, and the Labour Commissioner above both. Section 1 hands them every shop in Jammu and Kashmir, whatever its headcount. None of it starts until a Gazette notification says so, and no such notification has been traced.

The Act was passed by the Jammu and Kashmir Legislative Assembly, received the assent of the Lieutenant Governor on 1st November, 2025, and was published in the J&K Official Gazette the same day as Act No. VI of 2025. Its full name is the Jammu and Kashmir Shops and Establishments (Licensing, Regulation of Employment and Conditions of Service) Act, 2025. Everything below is what the printed Act says, section by section.

Two gaps in that map are worth naming straight away.

The Act creates no appellate authority. The words appeal, aggrieved, revision and tribunal do not appear anywhere in it. What section 5(4) says is that where there is a doubt or difference of opinion between an employer and the Inspector Cum Facilitator, the decision of the Assistant Labour Commissioner shall be final and binding on both the parties. Look at who the two parties are. That clause settles employer against inspector. A worker is not a party to it, so it is not a worker's remedy.

And a court cannot be approached directly. Section 27(1) says no Court shall take cognizance of an offence under this Act unless the Inspector cum Facilitator complains. Section 10(3)(b) adds that a person awarded compensation for wrongful dismissal shall not bring any civil suit or proceedings in respect of the same claim.

Step 1. Collect the paper the Act says you should already have. Section 9 requires that every employer shall issue an appointment letter to every employee at the time of engagement, showing terms of employment and conditions of service. Section 5(5) says the registration certificate shall be exhibited in the shop or establishment. And under section 3(2), the list of confidential, managerial and supervisory workers shall be displayed on the website of the shop or establishment, or at a conspicuous place if there is no website, with a copy sent to the Inspector-cum-Facilitator. Check whether your name is on that list, because section 3(1)(a) puts those workers outside the Act altogether.

Step 2. Write to the Inspector cum Facilitator of your area, and date the letter. He is the officer the shop registers with, the officer who inspects, and the only person who can start a prosecution. The reason the date matters is section 27(1): the complaint must be made within three months of the date on which the alleged commission of the offence came to the knowledge of the Inspector cum Facilitator. That clock starts when he knows. A dated written complaint is how you start it, and how you can later prove when it started.

Step 3. Take a dismissal to the Assistant Labour Commissioner. Section 10(1) bars an employer from dispensing with the service of an employee in continuous employment for not less than two hundred and forty days without at least one month of notice in writing, or wages in lieu of such notice. Section 10(3) lets that employee apply before the Assistant Labour Commissioner, who, if satisfied the person was dismissed without sufficient cause, may for reasons recorded in writing direct the employer to pay one and a half months wages as compensation. Section 10(3)(a) then treats that amount, for recovery, as a fine imposed under this Act.

Step 4. The Labour Commissioner sits above that. He is the officer who compounds offences under section 28, who permits all-week working under the proviso to section 15(3), and who notifies which shops need not give a weekly off under the proviso to section 16(1). Compounding matters to you, because section 28(2) says the composition shall have the effect of acquittal of the person accused. Money paid to the department can close a case that never reached a court.

Step 5. Right now, none of these rungs are live. No notification under section 1(3) has been traced, so nobody should assume this ladder is already running. Today an unpaid-wages or provident fund problem still travels the ordinary route. Our guide to complaining to the labour department about salary or PF sets that out.

This is the sentence the page exists for. Section 1(4) reads: It shall apply to all the shops and establishments in the Jammu and Kashmir.

There is no headcount in that clause, no wage ceiling, and no carve-out for small shops. Section 1(2) extends the Act to the whole of Union Territory of Jammu and Kashmir.

Twenty appears as a headcount exactly once in the whole Act, and it appears in the registration chapter. Section 5(1) makes every shop apply for registration online to the Inspector cum facilitator of the area concerned within a period of sixty days from the date of its commencement of trade or business. Then comes the first proviso: Provided that the registration shall be optional for shops and establishments who have less than twenty employees.

Read what that proviso actually does. It relieves a small employer of a filing. It does not lift the worker out of the Act. The hours chapter, the leave chapter, the appointment letter, the notice before dismissal and the welfare duties are all written to every shop and establishment to which the Act applies, and section 1(4) applies it to all of them. A worker in a four-person Srinagar shop is inside this Act on its own words.

Section 4 backs that up from the other side: nothing in the Act shall adversely affect any right or privilege to which any worker is entitled, under any law, award, agreement, contract, custom or usage for the time being in force. Section 30 adds that the Act is in addition to, and not in derogation of, any other law in force.

Being covered whatever the size is a real point, but it is a point about size only. Three things can still take the Act away from you.

• Section 3(1) removes people and premises, not sizes. It says the provisions of this Act shall not apply to a person occupying position of confidential, managerial or supervisory character in a shop or in an establishment, a worker whose work is inherently intermittent, and a member of the family of employer. It also keeps out any office of the Government or the local authority, any office of the Reserve Bank of India, no-profit-no-loss establishments for the care of the sick or infirm, charitable bazars and fairs, stalls at railway stations, motor-vehicle passenger and goods transport businesses, clubs that are not residential, and offices of lawyers.
• Section 33 lets the Government exempt shops. The Government may, by notification in the Official Gazette, exempt any shop and establishment, or class of establishments in any area, from any or all the provisions of the Act, after two months of previous publication of its intention.
• Much of the detail is left to rules that do not exist yet. The registration fee, the health and safety measures, the qualifications of inspectors and even the safeguards attached to women's night shifts are all as may be prescribed under section 32. No rules made under section 32 have been traced.

Goa passed its own Shops and Establishments Act in 2025, weeks apart from this one, and it answers the coverage question the other way round. We covered it in the Goa Shops Act 2025 and its twenty-worker threshold. Put the two side by side.

So the two Acts share a year, a subject and almost a name, and disagree about the person the law is for. If you have read the Goa page and assumed the twenty applies everywhere, this is the correction: in Jammu and Kashmir, twenty is a paperwork line, not a coverage line.

The honesty has to run both ways. Jammu and Kashmir looks better on paper here, and paper is all it is until the section 1(3) notification issues.

Because section 1(4) does not filter by size, this list belongs to the smallest shop as much as the largest. Quote the section number when you ask.

Note the mismatch in rows three and four, because it is in the Act and nobody has resolved it. Section 13(3) calls anything past eight hours a day overtime. Section 14 pays the double rate on a different trigger: work in excess of ten hours with one hour rest and forty-eight hours in a week. Those two triggers are not the same, and until rules or a ruling reconcile them, quote both rather than assuming the double rate starts at the ninth hour. For how the central occupational safety code handles the same problem, see our guide to working hours, overtime and spread-over.

Section 11 is the most specific thing in this Act, and it is not written as a curfew. Section 11(1) is flat: No woman worker shall be discriminated against in matters of recruitment, training, transfers or promotions or wages.

Section 11(2) then allows night work, but only on stacked conditions. Its words are that the woman worker with her consent, shall be allowed to work during night shifts in any establishment in which adequate protection of their dignity, honour and safety, protection from sexual harassment and their transportation from the establishment to the doorstep of their residence as may be prescribed are provided by the employer or his authorised representative or manager or supervisor.

Take that clause apart, because each limb is separately checkable.

1. Her consent. The clause opens with it. Without consent there is no night shift under this section.
2. Dignity, honour and safety. Adequate protection of all three has to exist in the establishment.
3. Protection from sexual harassment. Named separately from safety, so it is its own condition.
4. Transport to the doorstep. Not to the gate, not to the nearest stop. The words are transportation from the establishment to the doorstep of their residence.
5. As may be prescribed. The standard for all of it lives in rules under section 32, and no such rules have been traced. Until they exist, the yardstick is the clause itself.

Section 20's creche duty and section 31's application of the Maternity Benefit Act, 1961 sit alongside this. For the parallel national position, see women at work under the new labour codes.

This is the other clause worth reading slowly, because it does not read cleanly. Section 5(3) says the registration certificate shall initially be valid up to ten years ending 31st December of that year and may be renewed at a time up to a period of 5 years on payment of such fee or late fee as may be prescribed.

Those words point in two directions at once. The outer figure is ten years; the phrase ending 31st December of that year suggests the certificate expires on a calendar-year end rather than an anniversary. Renewals then run in blocks of up to five years. Do not assume a date from this. Read the term printed on the certificate itself, and expect the rules under section 32 to fix the rest.

The rest of the registration chapter is short and worth knowing.

• Sixty days to apply, from the date of commencement of trade or business or when the shop comes into existence, under section 5(1).
• Certificates already held under the 1966 Act carry over. The second proviso to section 5(1) says shops and establishments already registered under that Act shall be deemed to have been registered under the provisions of this Act.
• Thirty days to report a closure, under section 7, and thirty days to report any change in the registration certificate, under section 8.
• Registration can be cancelled under section 6 where it was obtained by misrepresentation, suppression of material facts, forged documents or fraud, after the employer is given an opportunity of being heard.

If you are on the employer side of this, our walkthrough of how a shop and establishment licence is applied for covers what such a file normally contains.

Section 35 is one line: The Jammu and Kashmir Shops and Establishments Act, 1966 is hereby repealed, followed by two savings provisos.

Notice what that line does not carry. It has no date of its own and no phrase keying the repeal to commencement. It does not need one, and here is the reasoning. Section 35 is a section of an Act that section 1(3) makes inert until a notification issues. A repeal written inside a statute that has not come into force cannot operate before that statute does. The Act's own drafting assumes the same thing, because the second proviso to section 5(1) speaks of shops already registered under the 1966 Act being deemed registered under this one, which only makes sense if those registrations are still live.

So the honest statement is this. The 1966 Act continues until the section 1(3) notification issues, at which point section 35 repeals it. We are not describing what the 1966 Act contains, because that statute is not the source this page is built on.

The savings provisos are worth a line each. Proviso (a) carries forward every appointment order, rule, bye-law, regulation, notification, registration or notice made under the repealed Act, so far as it is not inconsistent with the new one, until superseded. Proviso (b) says a trial for an offence under the old Act continues as if it had not been repealed, and any penalty is recovered under the old Act.

Section 1(3) reads: It shall come into force on such date as the Government may by notification in Official Gazette, appoint.

As of 30 August 2026 no such notification has been traced. That is not proof one was never issued. It means nobody should assume the Act is running, and nobody should assume it is dead. To check, look in the Jammu and Kashmir Official Gazette for a notification under section 1(3) appointing a date, and for rules made under section 32. If you cannot find either, ask the department. The last section of this page is exactly that question.

Two consequences follow from the same missing notification. The sixty-day registration clock in section 5(1) has not begun for anyone. And section 34, the power to remove difficulties, is itself limited to two years from the date of the commencement of this Act, so even that safety valve is waiting.

Jammu and Kashmir has another 2025 statute in the same position, assented on the very same day and still without a start date. See the J&K Tenancy Act 2025, its deposit cap and its start date, which turns on the same kind of clause.

Take a shop in Srinagar with four workers behind the counter. Nothing below is a real case. It is the statute applied to a plain set of facts, using only the Act's own numbers.

The shop employs fewer than twenty people, so the proviso to section 5(1) makes registration optional. There may be no certificate on the wall under section 5(5), no entry in the register, and no departmental file with the shop's name in it.

None of that changes section 1(4). Once the Act commences, the four workers are inside it. Each is owed an appointment letter under section 9, forty-eight hours a week and eight a day under section 13(1), a half-hour break after five continuous hours, a weekly holiday with wages under section 16(1), fourteen days of casual leave under section 16(2) and eight paid festival holidays under section 16(6). A worker who crosses two hundred and forty days earns leave at one day for every twenty days worked and cannot be dispensed with on less than a month of notice or wages in lieu.

Now the honest part. Covered in law is not the same as easy to prove. Where registration is optional, the paper trail an inspector or an Assistant Labour Commissioner would normally start from may simply not exist. That is why, in a small shop, the appointment letter under section 9 and a dated written complaint to the Inspector cum Facilitator matter more than they would in a hundred-person establishment. They are the record.

On the wording, yes. Section 1(4) says the Act shall apply to all the shops and establishments in the Jammu and Kashmir, with no headcount attached. The number twenty appears only in the proviso to section 5(1), and only to make registration optional. That proviso relieves your employer of a filing. It does not remove you from the hours, leave, notice or welfare provisions. Two caveats stay attached: section 3(1) may exclude you as a person, and none of it runs until section 1(3) is notified.

No, and the Act says so twice over. Section 1(4) applies the Act to all shops and establishments, not to registered ones. Below twenty employees registration is optional under the proviso to section 5(1), so an unregistered small shop is exactly what the Act contemplates rather than a shop evading it. What non-registration really costs you is evidence, not rights, because there is no certificate to inspect under section 5(5) and no register entry to ask for.

No commencement notification has been traced as of 30 August 2026, and section 1(3) requires one before anything in the Act operates. To check for yourself, search the Jammu and Kashmir Official Gazette for a notification under section 1(3) appointing a date, and for rules notified under section 32. If neither turns up, that absence is itself worth converting into an RTI question, because a department has to answer whether a notification exists.

Only on the terms in section 11(2), and only with your consent. The section allows a woman worker, with her consent, to work night shifts in an establishment where the employer provides adequate protection of dignity, honour and safety, protection from sexual harassment, and transportation from the establishment to the doorstep of her residence. The detail of each safeguard is left to rules under section 32, and no such rules have been traced, so for now the clause itself is the standard to quote.

Section 5(3) says the certificate shall initially be valid up to ten years ending 31st December of that year, and may be renewed at a time up to a period of 5 years on payment of a prescribed fee or late fee. The Inspector cum Facilitator of the area is the officer who registers and issues it under section 5(2). The fee itself is not printed in the Act, so it will come from rules made under section 32, which is one more reason the rules are worth asking for.

The penalties chapter looks heavy at the top and gets much lighter one line down.

Now do the arithmetic on the four-worker shop above. The proviso to section 25(1) caps the total fine at two thousand rupees per worker employed. Four workers means a ceiling of ₹8,000 and a floor of ₹4,000, whatever the fifty-thousand figure in the main clause says. That tension sits in the printed Act, and no court has had occasion to read the two together, because the Act has not commenced. We are not going to resolve it for you. We are pointing at it, because the same smallness that makes you covered also makes the money small.

Section 27 sets the outer limits on any of this. No Court shall take cognizance unless the Inspector cum Facilitator complains within three months of the offence coming to his knowledge, or within six months where the offence is disobeying a written order of that officer. And section 27(2) puts the trial itself before the Assistant Labour Commissioner.

Every practical thing on this page runs through one unanswered question: which human being is the Inspector cum Facilitator for your area, and has the Act been switched on at all. Section 23(1) says the Government may, by notification, appoint such persons as possess the prescribed qualification to be Inspector cum Facilitator and may assign to them such local limits as it may think fit. Until you have that name and those local limits, your dated complaint has nowhere to go, and steps two, three and four of the ladder above are addresses you do not have.

Both facts sit in the same place: the Labour Department of the Union Territory of Jammu and Kashmir, whose Labour Commissioner the Act names in sections 15, 16 and 28. Address the application to the Public Information Officer of that department, and ask for these.

1. A copy of the notification issued under section 1(3) of the Jammu and Kashmir Shops and Establishments (Licensing, Regulation of Employment and Conditions of Service) Act, 2025 appointing the date on which it comes into force, and if no such notification has issued, a statement to that effect.
2. A copy of the notification issued under section 23(1) of that Act appointing Inspectors cum Facilitators, showing the designation of the officer and the local limits assigned for my district, and the same for the Chief Inspector cum Facilitator.
3. A copy of the rules made under section 32 of that Act, including the fee prescribed for registration under section 5 and the conditions prescribed under section 11(2) for night shifts of women workers.
4. Whether the establishment named below is recorded as registered under the Jammu and Kashmir Shops and Establishments Act, 1966, and the number of employees shown in that record.

The clock on that application is not this Act's clock, and the contrast is the point. The Public Information Officer has thirty days to answer, after which the reply is deemed refused and your first appeal is due within thirty days. Set that against the Act's own periods: sixty days for a shop to apply for registration under section 5(1), thirty days to report a closure under section 7 or a change under section 8, and three months for the Inspector cum Facilitator to complain to a court under section 27(1) once he knows. Every one of those depends on a start date that a single thirty-day RTI reply can confirm or rule out.

Draft the application with the AI RTI Drafter, keep the thirty-day and first-appeal dates in front of you with the RTI Timeline Tracker, and if the thirty days pass in silence, build the appeal in the First Appeal Builder. The J&K-specific fee mode and addresses are in how to file an RTI in Jammu and Kashmir, the exact wording of what a registration file should contain is in RTI for shop and establishment registration, the sections you are relying on are set out in the RTI Act, and the full method for pushing a stalled application is in The RTI Playbook.

One closing line, plainly. Jammu and Kashmir has written a Shops Act that does not abandon the small shop, and that is genuinely better than the alternative next door. It is also a statute waiting for a one-line notification. Asking for that notification is not a formality. It is the whole difference between a right on paper and a right you can use.