The Cabinet on Wednesday approved amendments to the Labour Laws (exemption from furnishing returns and maintaining of registers by certain establishments) Act, 1988, to reduce the number of returns mandated to be filed by companies.
It also allowed the Food Corporation of India and profitable public sector companies to merge 50 per cent of the dearness allowance with their existing basic pay, in step with the central dearness allowance pattern.
Central PSUs, which can absorb the additional expenditure without any budgetary support, can offer the benefit retrospectively from April 1, 2004.
The Cabinet also authorised the government to sign the Charter of Asian Disaster Preparedness Centre along with eight other countries, including China, Thailand, Pakistan, Cambodia and the Philippines.
After the amendments, companies will be required to file only one annual return instead of filling up numerous forms that they do at present. Similarly, replacing many registers will be just two registers in the prescribed format.
At present, companies covered under various labour laws have to maintain a register showing fulfilment of obligation under these laws. Each company, on an average, maintains 15 such registers, which are open to scrutiny by labour inspectors.
The Cabinet directed the Cabinet secretary to ascertain if a similar simplification exercise could be undertaken for other ministries as well, Minister for Information and Broadcasting S Jaipal Reddy told reporters after a Cabinet meeting.
The Cabinet also approved amendments to the Scheduled Acts to prescribe uniform penalties for obstruction and non-maintenance of records.
The Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs (CCEA) cleared the establishment of a transmission system associated with the Kudankulam Atomic Power Plant in Tamil Nadu with a total cost of Rs 1,779.29 crore (Rs 17.792 billion), including an interest during construction component of Rs 71.41 crore (Rs 714.1 million).
The plant will be commissioned in two phases with a capacity of 1,000 megawatt each. The first phase is likely to be commissioned by May 2007, and the second phase will be on by December 2007.
The CCEA also approved the time overrun in the drive to modernise marine oil terminals at the Mumbai port. "There was no cost overrun in spite of the time overrun," Chidambaram said.
The project, which was scheduled to be completed by March 2003, got delayed until December 2004 because of external factors like transporters' strike and rains.
Other proposals which got a go-ahead include the modernisation of the Indian Agricultural Research Institute at a cost of Rs 181.89 crore (Rs 1.818 billion).
The Cabinet also extended the term of the Justice Mukherjee Commission of Inquiry which is looking into the disappearance of Subhash Chandra Bose. Extended by six months, its term will now end on November 14.
Proposals cleared