Narela, the industrial estate, Bawana, Holambi, Bankner and the belt along the GT Karnal Road — a workforce recruited in another State, employed through a thekedar, and holding almost nothing in its own name.
Quick answer: Parliament wrote a statute specifically about men brought from one State to work in another, and almost none of them have heard of it. The Inter-State Migrant Workmen Act, 1979 defines them in section 2(1)(e) as anyone “recruited by or through a contractor in one State … for employment in an establishment in another State, whether with or without the knowledge of the principal employer”. It owes each of them a pass book under section 12(1)(b) — photograph affixed, printed in his own language, naming the establishment and the period of employment, and under 12(2) “retained with the inter-State migrant workman concerned”. It owes a displacement allowance of “fifty per cent. of the monthly wages” (s.14) and a journey allowance both ways with wages “as if he were on duty” (s.15). And then section 16(g): on a fatal accident, report it to the authorities of both States “and also the next of kin of the workman” — without ever saying who the next of kin is, or how anybody is to establish it. A village knows. The office deciding the compensation, the provident fund and the pension does not, and acts only on paper. That paper is the whole of what we do. A wedding held in a village courtyard years ago already married you under section 7; only the record is missing, and there is no cut-off. Ceremony ₹5,100, with registration ₹7,100, a wedding already held ₹6,000, civil route ₹15,000. We pursue no wage or compensation claim and take nothing for any of it, we provide no witnesses, and if your home State suits the file better we say so before you pay a rupee.
Narela is a working belt. The industrial estate, the plots off the GT Karnal Road, the factories and godowns and the units that run two shifts — and behind all of it a workforce that was recruited somewhere else and brought here to work. Jharkhand, Bihar, eastern Uttar Pradesh, Odisha, West Bengal, Chhattisgarh. Brought by a thekedar, often in a group, often with a bus arranged and an advance paid at the other end.
Almost nobody in that workforce knows that Parliament wrote a statute specifically about them. It exists, it has existed since 1979, and it begins by naming exactly what they are.
Section 2(1)(e) of the Inter-State Migrant Workmen (Regulation of Employment and Conditions of Service) Act, 1979 defines its subject in a single sentence: an "inter-State migrant workman" means "any person who is recruited by or through a contractor in one State under an agreement or other arrangement for employment in an establishment in another State, whether with or without the knowledge of the principal employer in relation to such establishment."
Read that slowly, because every clause of it is doing work.
"Recruited by or through a contractor." The thekedar is the trigger. If a man walked to Delhi on his own and found work at the gate, this Act is not about him. If somebody came to his village, or to a labour chowk in his district, and signed him up — then it is.
"In one State ... for employment in an establishment in another State." Two States, and the law cares which is which. One is where he was recruited; the other is where he works. The Act never stops treating those as separate places, and it never pretends the second has replaced the first.
"Under an agreement or other arrangement." No written contract is required. "Other arrangement" is deliberately loose, because Parliament knew perfectly well that nothing would be in writing.
"Whether with or without the knowledge of the principal employer." This is the most useful phrase in the definition. The factory does not escape the Act by saying it had no idea how its labour was assembled. The statute reaches the man at the machine whether the company knew his name or not.
Why is any of this on a marriage website? Because of what the Act does next, and what it never does. It gives this workman a document, an allowance, a journey home, and a set of duties owed to him. And in its final duty it reaches past him to somebody else — and at that point it stops, assumes, and says nothing further. That silence is the whole subject of this page.
Here is the provision that ought to be read aloud at every labour chowk in north Delhi, because it is the only statutory document many of these men are entitled to and almost none of them have.
Section 12(1)(b) places a duty on the contractor "to issue to every inter-State migrant workmen, a pass book affixed with a passport size photograph of the workman and indicating in Hindi and English languages, an where the language of the workman is not Hindi or English, also in the language of the workman" — and then lists what it must say. (The small grammatical slip in the middle of that clause is the statute's own; it is quoted as printed.)
Seven particulars, in the Act's words:
And then section 12(2), which is the part that matters most and is ignored most completely: "The contractor shall maintain the pass book referred to in sub-section (1) up-to-date and cause it to be retained with the inter-State migrant workman concerned."
Retained with the workman. Not in the thekedar's bag, not in the site office, not produced when an inspector comes. The statute says the book lives with the man whose photograph is in it.
Look at what that book would be, if it existed. A document with his photograph on it. Printed in a language he can read. Naming the establishment he works at — which is to say, naming a place in Delhi. Stating the period he has been employed. Kept current. Held in his own hands.
That is, in substance, an employment and presence record in his own name — and a man with no rent agreement, no payslip, no electricity bill and an Aadhaar printed with a village address nine hundred kilometres away is a man who badly needs one.
We have to be careful and honest here. A pass book under this Act is not an address proof, it is not an identity document for the purposes of a marriage file, and no office is obliged to accept it as either. This page is not telling anybody to turn up with one and expect it to work. What we are saying is narrower and still worth saying: a man entitled to a document in his own name should have the document. It costs him nothing, the law already requires it, and a worker who has one is in a better position than a worker who has nothing at all — in a dispute over wages, in a claim after an accident, and in the slow business of building up a record that says a person was in Delhi over a period.
If you have never seen one, ask the thekedar for it by name. "Pass book, section 12." It is his duty, not a favour. And if the answer is a laugh, that answer is itself information about the arrangement you are in.
While we are in this statute, two more provisions deserve to be known in this belt, because they are short, specific, and routinely ignored.
Section 14 — displacement allowance. "There shall be paid by the contractor to every inter-State migrant workman at the time of recruitment, a displacement allowance equal to fifty per cent. of the monthly wages payable to him or seventy-five rupees, whichever is higher." And 14(2): "The amount paid to a workman as displacement allowance under sub-section (1) shall not be refundable and shall be in addition to the wages or other amount payable to him."
Three things sit in those two sentences. It is payable at the time of recruitment, not at the end. It is fifty per cent of a month's wages — the ₹75 floor dates from 1979 and is of no practical use now, but the percentage is not a floor, it is the measure. And it is not refundable and in addition to wages, which is the statute closing off the two obvious tricks: calling it an advance, or counting it as part of the pay.
Section 15 — journey allowance. "A journey allowance of a sum not less than the fare from the place of residence of the inter-State migrant workman in his State to the place of work in the other State shall be payable by the contractor to the workman both for the outward and return journeys and such workman shall be entitled to payment of wages during the period of such journeys as if he were on duty."
Both journeys — the one that brought him and the one that takes him home. And wages for the days spent travelling, as if he were on duty, which is the sentence that would change the arithmetic of a trip home for a family in this belt if anybody enforced it.
What the statute actually owes an inter-State migrant workman, in one place. Every entry is the Act's own provision, quoted or summarised from its own text.
| Section | What it provides | Why it matters in this belt |
|---|---|---|
| 2(1)(e) | Defines the inter-State migrant workman: recruited by or through a contractor in one State for employment in an establishment in another State, “whether with or without the knowledge of the principal employer”. | The factory cannot step out of the Act by saying it never knew how its labour was assembled. |
| 2(1)(b) | Defines the contractor widely — it “includes a sub-contractor, Khatadar, Sardar, agent or any other person, by whatever name called, who recruits or employs workmen”. | Whatever the man who brought you is called locally, the Act probably reaches him. |
| 12(1)(b) | A pass book with your photograph affixed, in Hindi and English and also in your own language where that is neither, carrying seven stated particulars. | The one document in his own name that a worker here is entitled to and almost never has. |
| 12(2) | The contractor must keep it up to date and “cause it to be retained with the inter-State migrant workman concerned”. | The book lives with you, not in the thekedar’s bag or the site office. |
| 14 | Displacement allowance at the time of recruitment, “fifty per cent. of the monthly wages payable to him or seventy-five rupees, whichever is higher”, non-refundable and in addition to wages. | Payable up front, and it cannot be recast as an advance or counted inside the pay. |
| 15 | Journey allowance not less than the fare from your State to the place of work, “both for the outward and return journeys”, with wages for the travelling days “as if he were on duty”. | The return fare home is owed, not a favour — and the travel days are paid days. |
| 16(a)–(f) | Regular wages; equal pay for equal work irrespective of sex; suitable conditions judged “having regard to the fact that they are required to work in a State different from their own State”; residential accommodation; free prescribed medical facilities; protective clothing. | Clause (c) writes the distance from home into the legal standard itself. |
| 16(g) | On a fatal accident or serious bodily injury, report to the specified authorities of both States “and also the next of kin of the workman”. | The provision this page is about. It names the person by relationship and never says how anybody establishes who that is. |
What this page is not. We do not recover these amounts, we do not file wage claims, we do not appear before any labour authority, and we take no money for any of it. If a worker in Narela wants these provisions enforced, the people for that are the labour authorities and an advocate, and free legal aid exists. We set the sections out because a man who has never heard of them cannot ask about them, and because the next provision in the same list is the one this website actually exists for.
Section 16 of the 1979 Act sets out what the contractor owes the men he brought. It opens: "It shall be the duty of every contractor employing inter-State migrant workmen in connection with the work of an establishment to which this Act applies" — and then runs through seven clauses.
Clause (c) is quietly remarkable drafting — the statute instructing that conditions be judged "having regard to the fact that they are required to work in a State different from their own State." Parliament is saying: remember these men are far from home, and let that count.
And then clause (g), which is where this page turns.
Read clause (g) once more, by itself.
"In case of fatal accident or serious bodily injury to any such workman, to report to the specified authorities of both the States and also the next of kin of the workman."
A man is killed or badly hurt on a shift in Narela. The law says: tell the authorities in Delhi, tell the authorities in his own State, and tell his next of kin.
And that is where the statute stops. It does not say who the next of kin is. It does not say how anybody is to find out. It does not say what document establishes it, who decides in a dispute, or what happens when two people claim the position. It writes the duty, names the person owed it by relationship rather than by name, and assumes — as if it were the most obvious thing in the world — that when the moment comes somebody will simply know.
In a village where everybody knows the family, that assumption holds. A man dies, word reaches home, and nobody is in any doubt who his wife is. The whole settlement knows. Her position needs no proof because there is nobody to prove it to.
In the machinery that follows, it does not hold at all. Because the report under clause (g) is only the first thing that happens. Behind it comes the compensation claim, the provident fund, any insurance, the deposit-linked assurance, the employer's own ex gratia, a scheme payment, perhaps a pension — and every one of those is decided by somebody who never met the man, in an office, from papers. That person cannot act on what a village knows. He can only act on what is written down.
This is the same gap that runs under the whole of this website, and it is the reason a marriage service writes about labour statutes at all. Indian law hands things to a wife constantly. Compensation legislation puts the widow at the head of its dependants. Social-security definitions of "family" open with the husband or wife. Rent law passes a tenancy to her first. A pension scheme keeps paying her for life. And this Act, in 1979, required somebody to be told. Not one of those provisions explains how she is to be identified. Every single one of them takes it as read.
Closing that gap is the only thing this business does. A marriage certificate is not a piece of sentiment and it is not a formality for the album. It is the document that converts a fact an entire village is certain of into something an office two States away will act on, years later, when the person it protects is in no position to argue.
And in this belt the gap is at its widest, because of a combination you do not get elsewhere in Delhi. The man works far from where his family lives. The ceremony that married him was performed in a village, correctly and in front of two hundred people, and recorded nowhere. His employer may not know his wife's name. The arrangement that employs him may not be in writing. And the money, when something goes wrong, is decided in an office in a third place.
A wedding held in a village courtyard in 2016 is a valid marriage. Under section 7 of the Hindu Marriage Act, 1955 the ceremony itself is the operative act, so the couple were married from that day. What they do not have is the paper, and the paper is what the office wants. Our late registration page deals with bringing a wedding of any earlier year onto the record — there is no cut-off, and it is ordinary work.
The second practical problem in this belt is that a man frequently cannot say, with certainty, who his employer is — and therefore cannot produce a single piece of paper connecting his name to a place in Delhi.
The Contract Labour (Regulation and Abolition) Act, 1970 describes the arrangement he is in. Section 2(1)(b): "a workman shall be deemed to be employed as 'contract labour' in or in connection with the work of an establishment when he is hired in or in connection with such work by or through a contractor, with or without the knowledge of the principal employer."
Two parties, then. The contractor who hired him and the principal employer whose work is being done — and, once again, the law does not care whether the second one knew.
On wages, section 21 puts them in a line. Sub-section (1): "A contractor shall be responsible for payment of wages to each worker employed by him as contract labour and such wages shall be paid before the expiry of such period as may be prescribed." Sub-section (2) requires the principal employer to "nominate a representative duly authorised by him to be present at the time of disbursement of wages by the contractor", whose duty it is "to certify the amounts paid as wages". Sub-section (3) makes it the contractor's duty "to ensure the disbursement of wages in the presence of the authorised representative of the principal employer."
And then sub-section (4), which is the one worth memorising: "In case the contractor fails to make payment of wages within the prescribed period or makes short payment, then the principal employer shall be liable to make payment of wages in full or the unpaid balance due, as the case may be, to the contract labour employed by the contractor and recover the amount so paid from the contractor either by deduction from any amount payable to the contractor under any contract or as a debt payable by the contractor."
The thekedar vanishing does not end the matter. The statute moves the liability up to the establishment and lets it chase the contractor itself. That is a provision worth knowing in a belt where a contractor disappearing between two Saturdays is an ordinary event.
But the provision that matters for a document is section 29. Sub-section (1): "Every principal employer and every contractor shall maintain such registers and records giving such particulars of contract labour employed, the nature of work performed by the contract labour, the rates of wages paid to the contract labour and such other particulars in such form as may be prescribed." And sub-section (2) requires notices to be "exhibited ... within the premises of the establishment where the contract labour is employed ... containing particulars about the hours of work, nature of duty and such other information as may be prescribed."
So a register exists. Somewhere in that factory, by law, there is a record carrying the names of the contract labour employed, the work they did and what they were paid. A man who believes there is no paper anywhere with his name on it is, very often, simply wrong.
And a companion page, because this one deliberately does not cover the schemes. Where a worker in this belt is on the rolls — ESIC, provident fund, pension, gratuity, nominations, a widow’s claim after an accident at work, children’s papers and ration-card entries — all of that is set out on our Narela factory-families guide. This page is about the man the schemes have not reached: recruited through a thekedar, on nobody’s roll, and holding no paper at all.
What we are and are not saying. We cannot get you access to that register, we do not act in wage disputes, and we make no claim that a register entry serves as proof of address or identity for a marriage file — it does not. The point is narrower: the belief that "mera koi kaagaz nahin hai" is usually an overstatement, and a man who knows a statutory register exists asks better questions than a man who assumes the void. Where the question is a wage claim, an accident claim or access to records, that is for the labour authorities and an advocate, and we will say so on the call rather than take the work.
Now the ordinary difficulty, which is not about law at all.
A couple in Narela typically holds this between them: two Aadhaar cards printed with village addresses in two different districts of two different States; a room taken verbally from a landlord who wants no paperwork and no tenants on record; a phone number bought in somebody else's name; and, between them, not one document carrying either of their names at the place they actually sleep.
What the marriage file needs is less than people fear. Who you are, how old you are, and where each of you actually lives. It does not need ownership. It does not need a registered lease. It does not need a landlord to agree to anything or to be told anything at all.
Where the address is genuinely the obstacle, the usual route in this belt is to build one clean record and let the rest follow it — most often a bank account's address updated first, then the Aadhaar itself, then the electoral roll. That is a matter of weeks, not days, which is precisely why it is a conversation to have a month before a date rather than the week of it. Our Laxmi Nagar page walks through how that first record gets built from nothing, and our Timarpur page deals with what an out-of-State Aadhaar does and does not decide.
One warning specific to a workforce on shifts. Do not let the thekedar or a supervisor "arrange" documents. A paper produced for you by somebody else, naming an address you have never lived at, is not a shortcut — it is a defect you have paid for, and it surfaces in the worst place at the worst time. Everything in a marriage file can be built honestly. It is slower and it holds.
Send photographs before anybody takes a day off. On WhatsApp, at whatever hour the shift allows. It is free, it takes ten minutes, and in a belt where a day's absence costs a day's wages it is the cheapest possible way to find out what is missing.
This is the question families in Narela actually ring about, and this belt is the one place in Delhi where the 1979 Act has already thought about it.
Notice how that statute talks. "Recruited ... in one State ... for employment in an establishment in another State." Conditions judged "having regard to the fact that they are required to work in a State different from their own State." A journey allowance measured from "the place of residence of the inter-State migrant workman in his State." A fatal accident reported to "the specified authorities of both the States."
The Act never lets go of the home State. In its scheme a man working in Delhi has not become a Delhi man; he is a man from elsewhere, working here, with a return fare owed to him. Parliament built that assumption into every operative provision.
Marriage law does not work that way, and the difference matters. Two things are worth being clear about.
First, a marriage is solemnised where the rites are physically performed. A ceremony conducted at a mandir in Delhi is a ceremony in Delhi, whatever either card prints and whatever State either family calls home.
Second, residence is a question of fact about where you actually live — not a line printed on a card four years ago in another district. A couple whose room, work and daily life are in Narela live in Narela.
And yet, more often in this belt than anywhere else on this website, the honest answer is the other one. Where a household's real centre is still the village — where the wife lives there, the land is there, the family is there, and the man is in Delhi for eight months of the year and goes back — then that State's registry is frequently the better place for the file. It is near the people who will one day need the certificate. It is reachable without leave. And it will not require a man to spend a wage-day travelling for a correction.
We say that even though it costs us the work, because the alternative is a family holding a document in the wrong city.
What witnesses do is narrow and worth stating plainly, because the fear around it is out of all proportion. Two people come, stand in front of the officer, and put their signatures to two facts: that the couple present are the couple the papers describe, and that the ceremony happened. They promise nothing. No obligation attaches to them afterwards, financial or otherwise. Each brings two documents issued in his own name — one bearing a photograph, one showing where he lives. Nothing is sent ahead, and nobody may sign in place of a person who did not turn up. Who qualifies is set out on our witnesses page.
The difficulty here is churn, not willingness. A man's closest friend on the floor today may be on a different contract in Ludhiana by March and back in his district by the next harvest. A certificate, meanwhile, can need a witness traced twenty years on.
So choose for permanence over closeness. A relative. Somebody with family settled in Delhi. Anybody whose parents' address will still reach him when his own number has changed three times. The friend from the next machine is the natural choice and frequently the worst one available.
And take down more than a name. A permanent village address, a father's or brother's phone number, the district. It costs a minute now. It is worth a great deal to whoever has to find that man in 2046.
No signature is bought here. We arrange no witnesses at any price, and anybody at any office who offers to supply them should be refused on the spot. A name from a man who was never in the room is a flaw built into the certificate deliberately — and it gives way precisely where the document is examined hardest, which in this belt means in front of somebody deciding a compensation claim.
Three certified copies, not two, and this belt is the clearest case for it. One with the couple in Delhi. One at the village, with whoever keeps the family's papers. One with a relative in a third place, if there is a sensible one. The extra copy is cheap and it answers the thing that actually goes wrong: the document is in Delhi and the person who needs it is nine hundred kilometres away.
Write down three particulars in the first week — the issuing office, the date on the entry, and the serial number in the register. With those, a replacement copy is one short application. Without them, somebody has to hunt a name against an approximate year through records in a city he does not live in.
Photograph it and put the picture somewhere both of you can open from any phone, and tell one person at the village how to reach it. A copy nobody but the husband can find is a copy that fails at the only moment it was needed.
Check every field the day it arrives. Hold it against the Aadhaar rather than against memory, and look hardest at how the names have been spelled — a name written one way in a village school, another way by a bank in Delhi and a third way by whoever typed the form is the commonest defect in files from this belt. Then the two fathers' names as each man writes his own, the dates of birth against whatever age proof was handed in, the ceremony date, both addresses, and the register's own reference. A correction asked for this month is a form and a short wait. The same mistake found in twenty years, by an officer deciding what a widow is owed, is a far heavier thing.
You will not find a single office named anywhere on this website, and that is deliberate. Where a file belongs follows the address exactly as it is written; the sub-divisional boundaries across Delhi were reworked through 2026; and any name we set in type here could be stale by the time a family relied on it and gave up a day's wages for the journey. Read us the address as the Aadhaar words it and the current answer gets looked up for you, at no charge.
Two reassurances, because this is where people worry unnecessarily. A boundary redrawn after the event leaves an issued certificate exactly as valid as it was — nothing has to be redone. And an old register that seems to have gone missing has not been destroyed; it has passed to whichever office took over that area. Our Mayur Vihar Phase 2 page sets out how to write in for an old entry first and turn to RTI only if nothing comes back, and the Lajpat Nagar page deals with an application that has stopped moving — including Delhi's own legislation putting deadlines on notified services, under which a defaulting officer compensates the applicant from his own pocket.
| Area | What the file usually turns on here |
|---|---|
| Narela industrial area, DSIIDC plots, the GT Karnal Road units | A workforce recruited in another State, employed through a contractor, holding no document in its own name. |
| Narela sectors, the DDA blocks, Pocket 5 onwards | Allotment and resettlement papers in a parent's or grandparent's name; the file needs something in a living applicant's name. |
| Bankner, Holambi Kalan and Khurd, Lampur, Alipur side | Village and agricultural households — see our Alipur page for the land-record end of it. |
| Bawana, Pooth Khurd, Auchandi, the Singhu side | The same industrial pattern, usually with an even longer journey home. |
| Weddings performed in the village years ago | Already a valid marriage under section 7; what is missing is the record. No cut-off. |
| Couples where the wife lives in the home State | Both parties attend in person where both are required, so the trip has to be planned around the one week both of you are in the same place. |
| Households where a man was hurt or killed at work | Not our work and we take nothing for it — but establishing the marriage is the step every one of those claims assumes. |
| Couples marrying across caste or community | Our inter-caste and inter-religion pages set out what actually changes, which is less than families fear. |
One — assuming no paper anywhere carries your name. A pass book is owed to you under section 12 and a register of contract labour is required under section 29. The void is usually smaller than it feels.
Two — never asking the thekedar for the pass book. It is a statutory duty, not a favour, and the refusal tells you something about the arrangement.
Three — letting somebody else "arrange" your documents. A paper naming an address you never lived at is a defect you have paid for, and it surfaces at the worst counter.
Four — leaving the address problem to the week of the wedding. Bank, then Aadhaar, then roll. Weeks, not days.
Five — treating a village ceremony as unfinished. It married you on the day under section 7. The paper is the only thing missing, and it can be obtained for any earlier year.
Six — waiting because somebody said the penalty grows. It does not. Two fixed amounts, both waivable, neither rising.
Seven — choosing the friend from the next machine as a witness. He is the easiest to ask and the hardest to find in twenty years.
Eight — recording only a witness's name and mobile number. Take the permanent village address and a relative's number, or you have recorded nothing durable.
Nine — keeping every copy of the certificate in the room in Delhi. The person who will need it most is usually the one at the village.
Ten — assuming the family will be identified when the time comes. Clause (g) says the next of kin must be told. It does not say how anybody works out who that is. That is the gap the certificate closes.
The whole list. Duplicate copies, corrections to an entry, apostille handling, the managed package, and what the State takes on its own account are all set out on the fee page.
| Route | Our fee | Who it suits in this belt |
|---|---|---|
| Arya Samaj ceremony at our mandir | ₹5,100 | The Vedic rites alone, ending with the mandir's certificate. You are married from that day under section 7, with no State register yet aware of it. |
| Ceremony with registration handled | ₹7,100 | Ceremony and State record together — the usual choice for a couple both living and working in Delhi. |
| A wedding already held, brought onto the record | ₹6,000 | The commonest job in this belt. Any earlier year, any State, including a ceremony performed in a village courtyard with nothing written down. |
| Special Marriage Act, whole route | ₹15,000 | Open to any two persons whatever law would otherwise govern them. Slower, with a thirty-day notice open to objection. |
The State's collections are separate from ours, and each one is receipted into your own hand: ₹100 to the Marriage Clerk, the ₹200 that Delhi's 2014 Order attaches to an application, and ₹15 to the District cashier where the civil route is used. For a wedding from an earlier year that same Order adds two flat amounts — ₹500 where the filing falls in the second sixty-day stretch and ₹1,000 beyond it — either of which the ADM or DM has power to waive. Neither figure rises with further delay, so a family that has left it twelve years owes no more than one that has left it one.
Eight things cannot be had from us at any price: witnesses; a date that did not happen; a certificate with one of you absent; an assurance about how any officer or court will decide; any wage, compensation, provident fund or insurance claim; access to any employer's or contractor's records; any appearance before a labour authority, court or tribunal; and any suggestion or arrangement of a conversion. And where the honest answer is that your file belongs in your home State, you will hear it before you have paid anything — including on the call where saying it loses us the booking.
Sourced — the Inter-State Migrant Workmen (Regulation of Employment and Conditions of Service) Act, 1979. Section 2(1)(e), quoted whole, defining an inter-State migrant workman as "any person who is recruited by or through a contractor in one State under an agreement or other arrangement for employment in an establishment in another State, whether with or without the knowledge of the principal employer in relation to such establishment." Section 2(1)(b) on who counts as a contractor, which "includes a sub-contractor, Khatadar, Sardar, agent or any other person, by whatever name called, who recruits or employs workmen." Section 12(1)(b), requiring a pass book bearing a passport-size photograph and written in Hindi and English and, where the workman's language is neither, "also in the language of the workman", carrying the seven particulars (i) to (vii) set out above; and section 12(2), that the contractor "shall maintain the pass book ... up-to-date and cause it to be retained with the inter-State migrant workman concerned." Section 14(1), a displacement allowance "equal to fifty per cent. of the monthly wages payable to him or seventy-five rupees, whichever is higher", payable "at the time of recruitment", with 14(2) making it "not refundable" and "in addition to the wages." Section 15, the journey allowance for "both for the outward and return journeys" with wages during the journey "as if he were on duty." And section 16, clauses (a) to (g), quoted in full above, ending with the duty "in case of fatal accident or serious bodily injury ... to report to the specified authorities of both the States and also the next of kin of the workman."
Sourced — the Contract Labour (Regulation and Abolition) Act, 1970. Section 2(1)(b), deeming a workman to be employed as contract labour "when he is hired in or in connection with such work by or through a contractor, with or without the knowledge of the principal employer." Section 21, sub-sections (1) to (4), on responsibility for wages, the principal employer's nominated representative, disbursement in that representative's presence, and sub-section (4) making the principal employer "liable to make payment of wages in full or the unpaid balance due" where the contractor fails or short-pays, recoverable from the contractor "either by deduction from any amount payable to the contractor under any contract or as a debt payable by the contractor." And section 29, sub-sections (1) and (2), on the registers and records that every principal employer and every contractor must maintain, and the notices to be exhibited within the premises.
Each provision above was read in the statute's own text and confirmed against a second independent source. The grammatical slip quoted inside section 12(1)(b) is the statute's own and is reproduced as printed rather than tidied.
Sourced — the marriage provisions. From the Hindu Marriage Act, 1955: s.7, making the customary rites the solemnising act; s.5(ii) on consent; and s.8, enacted to make a marriage easier to prove. Section 4 of the Special Marriage Act, 1954 for the route open to any two persons, with its residence condition and its thirty-day notice. Delhi's 2014 Order supplies Order 8, the ₹200 application fee, the sixty-day window and the two late amounts. The ₹100 and ₹15 items and the published timescales come from the Delhi Revenue Department. BNS s.236 covers untrue declarations, and the Ministry of External Affairs publishes attestation and apostille rates.
What this page cannot say. Whether either Act applies to any particular workman, establishment or contractor — both have their own thresholds and conditions, and neither is set out here. Whether any person is entitled to a pass book, an allowance, or anything else under them. What a pass book, a register entry or any employment record is worth as proof of identity or address for a marriage file, which is a matter for the office examining it and not for us. Who any person's next of kin is, or who is entitled to any compensation, provident fund, insurance or pension payment. How any authority or court would decide anything. And which office serves a given address, allotted on the exact address after the 2026 boundary changes. Plainly: we solemnise and register marriages. We do not pursue wage, compensation, provident fund or insurance claims; we cannot get you access to any employer's or contractor's records; we appear before no labour authority, court or tribunal; and we take no payment for any of that. These sections are set out here because a man who has never heard of them cannot ask about them, and because the duty in clause (g) names a person by relationship and then leaves the proving of it to somebody else. Where a worker in this belt needs those provisions enforced, the labour authorities and an advocate are who that is for, and free legal aid is available to a woman with no income test at all.
One — say which State each of you was recruited in or came from, and where the ceremony was performed. That one sentence is what lets us tell you honestly whether Delhi or your home State suits the file, before anything is paid.
Two — read us the address each of you actually lives at from the Aadhaar itself rather than from memory, and say if it prints another State. It almost always does here, and it decides less than people fear.
Three — mention anything in writing, however slight. A pass book, a gate pass, an ID card from the unit, a bank passbook, a card from the ceremony, a photograph with both families in it. Send pictures on WhatsApp. It changes what we ask you to bring and it costs nothing.
Ring +91 8376863962. You will hear the route, our price and the government's separate share before money is mentioned at all. If the honest answer is that your village registry is the better place for this file, or that what you actually need is an advocate and not a marriage service, that is what you will be told — and finding it out is free.
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