The Employment Exchanges (Compulsory Notification of Vacancies) Act, 1959

What it does

The Act makes it compulsory for specified employers to notify vacancies to the employment exchange. It is a notification law and not a recruitment law. The employer reports the vacancy, and the exchange may submit names of registered candidates, but the Act does not oblige the employer to appoint anyone it submits. The employer remains free to select on its own criteria.

The Act also provides for the furnishing of returns by employers in the manner the rules prescribe, and for the powers of an officer to call for information and to inspect records in order to check that the duty has been met. The details of the form and timing of notification are in the rules made under the Act and are not in the Act itself.

Who it binds

Establishments in the public sector, and establishments in the private sector of a kind and size that the Act and the Central Government's notification bring within it. The private sector duty applies to establishments employing a stated number of persons, and the threshold is set in the notification and the rules and is not left to the employer to infer.

The Act does not require notification of every vacancy. It exempts categories of vacancy, such as certain unskilled work and short temporary posts, and a vacancy filled from within the establishment is not treated as a vacancy that must be notified. Whether an establishment is covered at all, and which vacancies are excluded, are questions answered on the notification and the rules.

What has changed, and when

The Act has been amended since 1959, and the administration of employment exchanges has since moved to a large extent to online platforms. This page does not state the details of the current electronic process, which sits in the rules and in the administrative arrangements of the Government.

The relationship between this Act and the new labour codes is a matter of commencement. The Act is addressed here as the law that governs notification of vacancies, and any change brought by a code depends on the notifications by which the code is brought into force.

What turns on it in practice

The obligation is easy to miss because no one sues to enforce it, and so it is usually found in an inspection or in diligence on a company that is being acquired. An establishment that is within the Act and has not filed returns carries a compliance gap, and the gap is of the same kind whether the company is large or small.

The second point is the relationship with the establishment's hiring policy. A company that fills posts through advertisements, agencies and campus recruitment has to ask whether it also owes a notification, and for which posts. The Act does not stop the company from using those other routes. It adds a step that has to be recorded.

The firm's employment practice names the Act among the statutes that apply to an employer, with the statutes on standing orders and on welfare of construction workers, and it is checked as part of a compliance review of the establishment and not as a subject of litigation.