Right to Disconnect Bill 2025 -NoCallsAfterWork and NoMoreMidnightEmailsMeetings

India’s Parliament is debating a question that affects almost every smartphone user with a job: should there be no calls, team meetings or emails after work hours unless you choose to take them? That is the core idea behind the Right to Disconnect Bill, 2025, introduced in the Lok Sabha as a private member’s bill by NCP MP Supriya Sule. The proposal aims to give employees a legal shield against the always‑online work culture that has intensified with smartphones, messaging apps and hybrid work.​

At its heart, the bill says that once your workday ends, your official obligation ends with it. Employers would not be allowed to pressure workers to respond to calls, emails, chats or late‑night video meetings beyond notified office hours or on holidays. If you choose to reply, that is your choice; if you refuse, there should be no punishment, poor appraisal, or subtle retaliation. The draft law defines this as a “right to disconnect” the right not to engage with work communications and still be considered a good employee.​

To implement this vision, the bill proposes an Employees’ Welfare Authority, a new body that would monitor after‑hours digital work, frame guidelines and enforce compliance. The authority would conduct surveys on how much unpaid digital overtime workers currently perform; it would also help negotiate company‑level “right to disconnect policies” wherever a firm has more than 10 workers. Employers and employee representatives would be required to agree on what counts as emergency contact, how often employees can be asked to work outside hours, and how overtime will be compensated.​

The bill goes beyond just turning off notifications. It suggests that when employees do work after hours, they should receive normal overtime pay, and that organisations must Promote mental‑health initiatives like counselling and even “digital detox centres” where workers can consciously unplug from screens. Companies that ignore these rules or punish staff for disconnecting could face penalties of around 1 per cent of their total wage bill, a non‑trivial amount for large employers. The idea is simple: if you want 24x7 availability, you must pay for it transparently instead of extracting it silently.​

Supporters argue that such a law is long overdue. The pandemic normalized late‑night calls, weekend Zooms and “just five‑minute” Teams meetings that quietly stretch into an hour. Many employees now feel they are never truly off duty, leading to burnout, anxiety and family strain. Supriya Sule has framed the bill as a way to “foster a better quality of life and a healthier work‑life balance” by putting legal boundaries around a digital culture that has grown without rules. Internationally, France, Spain and parts of Canada already have right‑to‑disconnect style protections; the Indian bill is seen as aligning with that trend while responding to local realities like long commutes and extended joint‑family responsibilities.​

However, the proposal raises complex questions for India’s diverse economy. Many startups, IT companies and global service centres operate on flexible schedules or across time zones. Critics worry that a rigid legal wall after office hours could be hard to apply in teams where colleagues sit in Bengaluru, London and New York. Some industry voices fear that, if drafted poorly, the law could reduce agility, complicate client commitments and push companies to move sensitive functions abroad. They also point out that plenty of employees voluntarily choose flexible work windows logging off in the afternoon, then catching up at night and any law must accommodate such arrangements without treating them as violations.​

There is also the practical challenge of enforcement. How do you prove that a late‑night call was “compulsory” instead of voluntary? Would employees be comfortable filing complaints against their own managers? Can a central authority fairly monitor millions of organisations, especially in the informal and gig sectors where contracts are loose and communication happens via WhatsApp rather than corporate email? These questions show that legislation alone cannot fix workplace culture; it must be backed by clear company policies, HR training and social norms that respect personal time.​

Another key reality check the bill now faces is parliamentary arithmetic. The Right to Disconnect Bill, 2025 is a private member’s bill, meaning it was introduced by an MP who is not a minister. In India, such bills rarely become law; historically, only a handful have ever been passed, and most are either debated to raise awareness or withdrawn after the government outlines its position. Analysts therefore see this proposal less as an immediately enforceable law and more as a strong political signal that work‑life boundaries have become a mainstream concern. Whether the government chooses to pick up the idea in the form of an official labour‑law amendment will likely determine its real future.​

Yet even as a conversation starter, the bill is important. It forces employers to ask uncomfortable questions: Do you expect your team to answer weekend calls without logging overtime? Are appraisal systems quietly rewarding only those who are perpetually available? Do your internal tools send emails at midnight by default, normalising after‑hours work? For employees, it offers a language to push back: the concept of a right to disconnect reframes “not replying at 11 pm” from disloyalty to legitimate self‑care.​

In the coming months, parliamentary committees, industry bodies, unions and digital‑rights groups will likely dissect every clause, from the threshold of 10 employees to the size of penalties and the design of the Employees’ Welfare Authority.