By – Amritesh Unny   

Abstract 

On 12 June 2026, the ILO (International Labour Organisation) adopted Convention No. 193, the first binding treaty on platform work. Its articles 13 to 15 do something Indian law has not, they make an algorithm explain itself before it takes away a livelihood. India abstained. Five weeks earlier it notified the Social Security (Central) Rules, 2026, which register gig workers, key their benefits to ninety app-measured days, and say nothing about who deactivates them. This article traces that gap; the natural justice, India already applies to faceless tax assessments, the explanation right its own states have legislated, and why ratification is not the question worth asking. India has built a register of its platform workers. Unfortunately, it has not built a forum in which they can ask why the app stopped giving them work. 

Introduction

The message is always a variation of the same sentence, “your account is temporarily restricted”. No officer signs it and no files exist. There is no show-cause notice, because no cause was put to the worker to show against. A rider who cleared four hundred orders last month opens the app at six and finds it has quietly stopped offering him work. The remedy is a chat window that replies in templates and on most occasions does not have sufficient prompts that address the issue faced by the rider. 

Administrative law has a name for what is missing, and it is nearly four centuries older than the app: Audi Alteram Partem, which translates to hear the other side. The trouble in 2026 is not that the principle has been forgotten, Iit is that the party doing the condemning is a dispatch model, and a dispatch model has no address for service. 

Geneva Wrote in down

On 12 June 2026, the International Labour Conference adopted Convention No. 193 on decent work in the platform economy, the first binding instrument for platform work. The vote was 406 to 8, with 36 abstentions. 

Most of it is familiar; safety, harassment, social security, correct classification. Articles 13 to 15 are what matter here. Article 13 requires platforms to tell workers, before engagement, that automated systems are monitoring and evaluating them, and how far those systems shape their access to work. Article 15 gives a written explanation for significant adverse decisions, and review of decisions that withhold money, suspend an account or end an engagement. Critically, Article 15(2) states that member states must ensure platforms have “appropriate human involvement.” 

That is natural justice, translated into machine-readable obligations, notice of the system, reasons for the decision, a human in the loop. Yet, it is also kinder than it looks, explanations are owed “on request,” review happens “as appropriate,” and a worker who does not know the rule exists cannot invoke it. Still, Article 17 bars deactivation on discriminatory or unlawful grounds and Article 21 requires accessible dispute resolution. A low floor is still a floor. 

India abstained, and India’s own workers and employer’s delegates voted in favour, leaving the government isolated inside its own tripartite delegation. At the 2025 session it had argued for a non-binding recommendation instead. 

Delhi Registered the Worker

Five weeks earlier, on 8 May 2026, the Ministry of Labour notified the Social Security (Central) Rules, 2026, six years after Parliament passed the Code they implement. Under Chapter VII, Rule 48 and 49, Swiggy, Zomato, Ola and every other aggregator must register on a government portal, onboard workers within forty-five days, and push joining and exit data through APIs in near real time. The Code contemplates aggregator contributions of one to two per cent of turnover, capped at five per cent of worker payouts. 

This is real, and overdue. It is also, strictly, plumbing. If one read the rules for anything on task allocation, ratings, batching, deactivation or explanation, one would you find nothing. The obligations run to the database. They stop at the decision. 

Then there is a threshold. To qualify for the notified benefits, a worker must clock ninety days (90) with a single aggregator in the previous financial year, or a hundred and twenty (120) if he splits his time across two or three apps. A day counts only if he earned something on it. Now consider who controls that. A rider does not decide how many orders reach him, the app does. Rate him poorly, or let him decline one batch too many, and the work thins out. This is not announced as a penalty, just experienced as fewer notifications. Enough thin days and he never reaches ninety. Nobody has dismissed him and nobody has told him anything. He is simply outside the scheme. So, the software that decides how much a rider earns has also become the software that decides whether he is insured, and it is the one part of the arrangement the Rules say nothing about. 

The Doctrine India already owns

There is no dearth of doctrinal jurisprudence. When the state automated adjudication, Indian courts refused to let the automation eat the hearing. Under the faceless assessment regime in Section 144B of the Income-Tax Act, High Courts in Delhi, Madras, Gujarat and Bombay have struck down orders passed without a draft order, without considering a reply, or with a single day to respond. Maneka Gandhi v. Union of India supplies the constitutional floor and Andaman Timber v. Commissioner of Central Excise insists a hearing is a substantive right, not a formality. 

However, that jurisprudence binds the State under Article 12 of the Indian Constitution. A dispatch algorithm is not the State, and a deactivated rider has no writ to file. This is why the norm must arrive by statute rather than constitutional osmosis, and why the general data law is such a conspicuous miss. The DPDP Act, 2023 contains no analogue to Article 22 GDPR, no right to contest a solely automated decision, no right to meaningful information about the logic involved. India legislated consent where it needed to legislate control. MeitY’s  AI Governance Guidelines of November 2025 are avowedly voluntary and decline a separate AI statute. 

Bengaluru got there first

The strange part is that Indian law already contains the language C193 is asking for, just not in Delhi. Karnataka’s Platform Based Gig Workers Act, 2025 makes platforms explain in simple language how automated systems affect fares, ratings and task assignment, and its Section 14(2) bars deactivation  without written reasons, fourteen days’ notice, and observance of the principles of natural justice. The phrase sits there in a state statute, aimed at a private algorithm. Telangana’s 2026 Act goes further on disclosure, with seven days’ notice and a due enquiry before termination. 

They are not model laws. Karnataka never defines what makes a reason “valid,” penalties start at ₹5,000, the rights are individual where the harm is collective, and nobody has said who audits disclosures. Rajasthan’s 2023 Act has sat unimplemented for want of rules. Even so, the Centre abstained in Geneva from a standard two of its own states have enacted, a curious thing to call premature. 

For contrast on 26 April 2026, China’s Central Committee and State Council issued a framework covering more than 200 million platform workers requiring minimum-wage-linked pay, hour caps enforced by the app itself, and disclosure of how algorithms set pay, dispatch tasks and impose penalties, by 2027. One system regulates the algorithm without permitting independent unions. The other permits unions and leaves the algorithm alone. 

Conclusion – Will India Ratify

Assumingly, not soon. India has ratified 47 conventions but not C87 or C98, and C193 would trigger reporting obligations plus Article 9’s classification duty, precisely the question what the labour codes were drafted to avoid. 

Nevertheless, ratification is the wrong thing to wait for. Nothing stops the Centre from writing Articles 13 to 15 into the Social Security Rules, or an explanation right into the DPDP Rules before they bite in 2027. Furthermore, IFAT v. Union of India, filed in September 2021, is still pending. The Supreme Court has already observed that these rights cannot be denied where a statutory regime provides for them. 

A register records individuals who are working. It says nothing about who decided when their work will come to a halt. Until the software that ends a livelihood has to give a reason and a name, India will have digitised the worker and left the boss offline.  

To conclude, what is astonishing is that none of this requires new technology. A reason can be dictated in under a minute. What we require is an honest admission that a deactivation is a dismissal, and dismissal is something the law has regulated for a century. Dismissal ought to be a formal process, with notice, with grounds, with a person who can be asked why. The 2026 Rules stop at enrolment because enrolment is cheap. Accountability costs something more, it slows the machine down. This is the simple truth. A worker who can be switched off without explanation was never really employed, they were only ever logged in. 

About the Author: 

Amritesh Unny is a three-year LL.B. (Hons.) student at Jindal Global Law School, O.P. Jindal Global University. He has a deep interest in human rights. 

Image Source : https://biz.chosun.com/en/en-it/2025/07/04/N6MCCT4DKFFBRLU26SZL766CZU/