The Assembly passed five government Bills on Friday including the Factories (Andhra Pradesh Amendment) Bill, 2025, AP Motor Vehicles Taxation (Amendment) Bill, 2025, and AP Shops & Establishments (Amendment) Bill, 2025.
According to the Minister for Labour, Factories and Boilers, Vasamsetty Subhash, the Factories (Andhra Pradesh Amendment) Bill, 2025 enabled the government to increase the permissible daily working hours for workmen subject to regulated rest intervals and spread-over limits thereby allowing greater operational efficiency for industrial and commercial establishments.
It facilitates the employment of female workers during night shifts in a manner that respects their rights, dignity, and safety, and expands their access to equal economic opportunities and in accordance with judicial precedents.
Further, the said Bill mandates appropriate safeguards, including rest periods, overtime compensation, safety measures, and welfare facilities for all workers, particularly those affected by extended or night time work hours.
The AP Motor Vehicles Taxation (Amendment) Bill is for reducing the green tax on Heavy Commercial Vehicles (HCV) up to 12 years old to ₹1,500 per annum and to ₹3,000 on HCVs more than 12 years old to reduce the burden on vehicle owners.
Transport Minister M. Ramprasad Reddy informed the House that the government had enacted the AP Motor Vehicles Taxation (Amendment) Act, 2006 to levy the green tax for controlling air pollution, and that the green tax is in addition to the tax payable under Section 3 of the AP Motor Vehicles Taxation Act, 1963.
The government used to collect ₹3,000, ₹10,000 and ₹16,000 per annum for different categories of HCVs less than 12 years old. These have now been brought down to a uniform rate of ₹1,500.
The green tax on HCVs more than 12 years old used to be ₹3,000, ₹6,000 and ₹20,000 per annum, which have been reduced to a single rate of ₹3,000.
As far as the AP Shops & Establishments (Amendment) Bill, 2025 is concerned, Mr. Subhash said it would provide greater operational flexibility to shops and establishments while maintaining necessary worker protections.
The Bill paved the way for increasing the maximum daily working hours from 8 to 10 (while retaining the weekly cap of 48 hours) for better workload distribution without increasing overall work pressure, rationalisation of spread-over limits and replacement of monthly overtime caps with quarterly limits.
Besides, the Bill facilitates simplification of rest interval requirements such as allowing six hours of continuous work with a 30-minute break reflects current working conditions and promotes better compliance.
Another part of the AP Shops & Establishments (Amendment) Bill, 2025 is allowing night time employment of women with certain safety and security precautions, by introducing a more inclusive and enabling framework for women’s employment in establishments operating outside conventional hours.
The Bill exempts establishments employing fewer than 20 workers from most of its provisions except key sections concerning registration, working hours, rest, safety, and welfare of the workers.
However, the safeguard provision ensures that once the number of employees reaches 20 or more, the full applicability of the Bill would be triggered automatically ensuring regulatory equity once it becomes an Act.
The other two legislations passed are AP Prevention of Begging (Amendment) Bill, 2025 and AP State Commission for Scheduled Tribes (Amendment) Bill, 2025.
The AP Prevention of Begging (Amendment) Bill, 2025 paved the way for removing the words ‘leper’, ‘leper asylum’ and ‘lunatic’ from the previous Act keeping in view their discriminatory nature towards persons with disabilities including those affected by leprosy.
AP State Commission for Scheduled Tribes (Amendment) Bill, 2025 set the stage for omitting the upper age limit for the posts of chairman and members of the ST Commission.
The amendment stated that “the chairman or the members shall, unless otherwise disqualified for continuing as such under the rules, hold office for a term of two years from the date of his / her assuming office, extendable up to two years for one time only.
