Factory Licence in Tamil Nadu: DISH Process, Plan Approval and Renewal

A Tamil Nadu factory needs two permissions from the Directorate of Industrial Safety and Health (DISH): plan approval in Form 1 before building or extending, and registration with a licence in Form 2 before work starts. DISH's charter sets the trigger at 10 workers with power or 20 without. The Factories Act has sat inside the OSH Code since 21 November 2025, so confirm the forms in use.

Does your unit need a factory licence, and what changed in November 2025?

The DISH citizen charter says factories employing 10 or more workers with power in the manufacturing process, and 20 or more without power, are registered under the Factories Act, 1948 and the Tamil Nadu Factories Rules, 1950. DISH sits under the state Labour and Employment department and also enforces the contract labour, migrant workmen and holidays laws.

That picture has a layer on top now. The Occupational Safety, Health and Working Conditions Code, 2020 came into force on 21 November 2025, by Ministry of Labour notification S.O. 5321(E) of that date. Section 143 of the Code repeals the Factories Act, 1948, and section 143(3) keeps rules and actions under the old Act alive, as if made under the Code, to the extent they do not conflict with it. The Code defines a factory at 20 workers with power or 40 without, but its definition lets a state's earlier, different number prevail until the legislature changes it.

What we could not confirm from a primary source is whether Tamil Nadu has notified final rules under the Code. We found a draft Tamil Nadu rule set from 2022 only. So the practical advice is simple: use the forms and portal that DISH is accepting on the day you file, and ask the regional office in writing whether your unit is covered. This guide uses the citizen charter's wording of the process, which describes the Factories Act track.

Step 1: plan approval before you build

Form 1 is the application for permission to construct, extend or take into use any building as a factory. A 2017 government order, G.O. (Ms) 145, moved Form 1 and Form 2 to DISH's online portal, so file there rather than on paper unless the office tells you otherwise.

The form asks for:

• particulars of the occupier and of the building owner;
• survey or door numbers, with documentary proof of ownership or occupancy;
• the purpose: first approval, added installation, added construction or a change;
• total installed capacity in horse power, including the present proposal, and the maximum number of workers;
• a description of the manufacturing process with a flow chart;
• each chemical stored, with the type of storage and the maximum quantity in tonnes.

The approving officer depends on size. The charter gives the Joint Director for factories with up to 250 workers, the Additional Director for 251 to 1,000, and the Director for more than 1,000 workers and for every factory engaged in dangerous operations. The charter's stated time for plan approval is three months. Treat that as the department's target, not a promise, and drawings that arrive incomplete will not meet it.

Step 2: registration and the licence before work starts

Form 2 combines registration, grant or renewal of the licence and the notice of occupation, and it is submitted in the name of the occupier, the person with ultimate control of the affairs of the factory. The form notes that where the occupier is a company, particulars of the directors must be given. It also asks for the manager's details, the processes carried on, the power installed in horse power including standby, the pressure vessels, the maximum workers on any day, and the number of years the licence is sought for.

Two lines in Form 2 tie it to other approvals. Item 12 asks for the reference number and date of your plan approval, and for the approval of arrangements for trade waste and effluent disposal along with the name of the authority that gave it. Item 14 asks whether the Labour Welfare Fund contribution for the previous year has been paid. A unit that skipped plan approval, or has no effluent clearance, cannot fill the form honestly.

Renewal, validity and late fees

The charter says the licence is renewed every year, and that the occupier may renew it for one year or for up to five years at a stretch. The renewal circular in the same document asks for Form 2, the licence in original, any partnership deed changes or a death certificate where the proprietor has died, and a fee paid by crossed demand draft or treasury receipt. The last date is 31 October. A belated application costs extra: 10 percent of the fee if it arrives in November, 20 percent in December and 30 percent after the licence has expired.

The licence fee itself is a slab set by installed horse power and the maximum number of workers. The charter prints the schedule from a 2012 government order, so read the current schedule on the DISH portal before you budget.

One conflict to settle with the office. G.O. (Ms) 145 of 31 August 2017, a preliminary notification, proposes to raise the maximum licence period in the rules from five consecutive calendar years to ten. Commercial guides say that amendment was finalised in 2018, but we could not confirm the final notification from DISH. Ask which period your portal offers. The Code adds its own rule for existing licences: a factory licence obtained under an earlier central labour law is deemed obtained under the Code and stays valid for the period it was issued for.

How the licence connects to fire, pollution and electrical approvals

The DISH file is read together with the others. The effluent approval in Item 12 comes from the pollution control board; our guide to Consent to Establish and Operate explains that track. Fire safety is a separate clearance from the fire service, set out in our Tamil Nadu fire NOC guide, and the electrical installation has its own inspectorate route in the Tamil Nadu CEIG guide. The drawings that DISH sees for exits and travel distances should match what the fire authority approves. The sequence for the whole project is in our factory approvals roadmap.

An easy way to have a file returned is a machine layout in Form 1 that shows different openings or exits from the building plan. DISH reads the workplace, the municipal authority reads the structure, and the two sets of drawings should describe the same building. Our note on what DISH plan approval is covers the same logic for the northern states.

How Secured Engineers helps

Secured Engineers designs the fire, electrical, HVAC and plumbing systems in-house, so the layouts that go into a factory plan file are drawn by the people who will build them. Fire NOC, CEIG and DISCOM net-metering filings are handled in-house. MEPF and solar can sit under one contract. We work from offices in Noida (Delhi NCR) and Ludhiana, and for Tamil Nadu we mobilise from those offices. The company has delivered 535+ projects across 18+ states, with 89.77% repeat clients.

If you already hold a Form 1 draft or a Form 2 application, we can review the drawings and the document set against the points above before it is filed. Read the full checklist on our factory licence and DISH approval guide, then send the file by WhatsApp, call +91 70099 85817, or ask for a free proposal.