West Bengal Migrant Workers' Welfare Scheme, 2023

What is the West Bengal Migrant Workers' Welfare Scheme?

West Bengal Migrant Workers' Welfare Scheme, 2023 is a Labour Department scheme that puts the state's out-migrating workforce on a formal register and attaches a small set of guaranteed payments to that register. The scheme was notified in 2023 and is run by the West Bengal Migrant Workers' Welfare Board, with the Labour Commissionerate as the executing machinery on the ground.

The problem the scheme addresses is specific. A construction worker from Malda who dies at a site in Kerala, or a mason from Murshidabad who loses the use of an arm in Tamil Nadu, sits outside both the West Bengal welfare system and the host state's. According to the Labour Department, the scheme exists to provide online registration, grievance redressal, emergency assistance and welfare measures for migrant workers who are residents of West Bengal and have migrated to other states or countries for work.

Registration produces a Migrant Workers' Identification Number (MWIN), which is the anchor for everything that follows. The scheme is commonly referred to in Bengali as the Parijayee Shramik scheme, and the registration channel carries the name Karmasathi (Parijayee Shramik), so a worker searching under either name is looking at the same programme.

What the scheme is not. The scheme is not a monthly pension and not an unemployment allowance. Nothing is paid simply for being registered. Money moves only when a defined event happens, death, repatriation of a body, cremation, or certified permanent disability from a workplace accident.

Who is eligible for the West Bengal Migrant Workers' Welfare Scheme?

You can register if:

• You are between 18 and 60 years of age.
• You are by origin a resident of West Bengal, with a permanent address in the state.
• You are employed in a remunerated activity in a state or union territory in India other than West Bengal.
• You can name a nominee and give a working bank account.

All four conditions have to hold together. The age band is read from Aadhaar, so a worker whose Aadhaar shows an age above 60 will be rejected regardless of actual working status.

You are not eligible if:

• You are under 18, which is the statutory floor for the scheme.
• You are above 60 years of age.
• You are not of West Bengal origin, even if you currently work outside the state.
• You work inside West Bengal. A worker who has not migrated out of the state does not fall within the definition and cannot register here. The Samajik Suraksha Yojana, the department's umbrella social security scheme for unorganised workers, is the correct route for that worker instead.
• You are not in remunerated employment, a person who has moved out of the state for study or for family reasons is not a migrant worker for this purpose.

Registration obtained through misrepresentation or false information can be cancelled, and cancellation voids every claim made under it.

What does the scheme pay?

Three points on how these interact are worth getting right, because they are the source of most confusion at the counter.

Repatriation and cremation are alternatives, not add-ons to each other. The Rs 25,000 repatriation grant applies where the family chooses to bring the body home from the workplace. The Rs 3,000 cremation grant applies where the worker dies at the workplace or at the place of stay required by the job and the cremation happens there. A family that brings the body back to Bengal is using the repatriation route.

Death assistance is separate from either. The Rs 50,000 or Rs 2,00,000 is the compensation to the family; the transport and cremation amounts exist because those costs land on the family within hours, long before any claim is processed.

Disability assistance is one-time. Rs 50,000 and Rs 1,00,000 are not annual figures and not instalments. The disability must arise out of an accident during work, and the percentage band decides which of the two amounts applies.

How to apply for the West Bengal Migrant Workers' Welfare Scheme

1. Open the Karmasathi (Parijayee Shramik) registration channel, the online portal or the mobile app maintained by the Labour Department.
2. Start a new migrant worker registration and enter your Aadhaar number and mobile number, then verify the OTP sent to that mobile.
3. Fill in your permanent West Bengal address exactly as it appears on your voter ID or ration card. This field is what establishes state of origin.
4. Enter the workplace details, the state or union territory where you work, the employer or contractor name, and the work address. This is what establishes migrant status and is checked at verification.
5. Enter nominee details — name, relationship and Aadhaar. Do not leave this blank. The nominee is who the death, repatriation and cremation money is paid to.
6. Enter your bank account number and IFSC from your passbook and upload the supporting documents.
7. Submit the application. The Inspector of Minimum Wages under the Labour Commissionerate verifies and approves the registration.
8. Note down the MWIN issued on approval, and share it with your family in West Bengal, they are the ones who will use it if anything happens to you.

A worker who cannot complete the online form, or whose family is doing it on his behalf from the village, can seek assisted entry at the district labour office or the office of the Assistant Labour Commissioner having jurisdiction over the permanent address.

How to claim assistance after registration

1. Collect the event document first, death certificate, police or accident report for an accidental death claim, or a disability certificate issued by a government hospital stating the percentage.
2. File the claim against the worker's MWIN through the same portal or at the Assistant Labour Commissioner's office.
3. The Assistant Labour Commissioner having jurisdiction verifies the claim and sanctions it.
4. The sanctioned amount is transferred to the nominee's bank account.

Cremation assistance is the one payment meant to be reached quickly, because it covers a cost that arises at the workplace within a day. Families should file it without waiting for the larger death claim to be settled.

Why claims get rejected, and how to avoid it

• Registration lapsed for want of renewal. Renewal is annual. This is the single most avoidable failure, the worker is genuine, the event is genuine, and the register says the registration expired.
• No nominee recorded, or a nominee whose name does not match the person claiming.
• Disability certified by a private hospital. The scheme requires certification by a government hospital, and there is no discretion on this.
• Disability below 40 per cent. The lowest band starts at 40 per cent; nothing is payable below it.
• Accidental death claimed without evidence of an accident. Without a police or accident record, a claim is settled at the natural death rate of Rs 50,000, not Rs 2,00,000.
• Workplace details that do not stand up to verification, or a workplace inside West Bengal.
• Bank account frozen, closed, or in a name that does not match the nominee.

The practical lesson for a migrant worker's household is that almost all of this is fixable in advance and almost none of it is fixable afterwards. Keeping the MWIN, the nominee entry and the annual renewal current costs nothing and is the whole difference between a claim that pays and one that does not.

Key dates and renewal

The scheme has no application deadline: registration is open all year, and claims are filed when the event occurs rather than in a window. What does have a clock on it is renewal, which is due every year. A worker who registered during one posting and then changed states should update the workplace details at renewal rather than leave stale employer information on the record.

Where to raise a grievance

Grievance redressal is built into the scheme rather than bolted on, because workers outside the state cannot walk into a Bengal office. Escalation runs in this order:

• The grievance facility on the Karmasathi (Parijayee Shramik) portal, quoting the MWIN.
• The Assistant Labour Commissioner having jurisdiction over the worker's permanent address in West Bengal, who is also the sanctioning authority for claims.
• The Labour Commissionerate, and above it the Labour Department at New Secretariat Building, Block A, 12th Floor, 1 Kiran Sankar Roy Road, Kolkata

Registration under the scheme is free. No agent or middleman is authorised to charge a migrant worker for obtaining an MWIN or for filing a claim, and no official will ask for the OTP sent to the worker's mobile number.

How to check your application status

Registration and claim status both live on the same Karmasathi (Parijayee Shramik) channel used to apply, so checking status does not need a separate account or a fresh visit to an office in most cases.

1. Open the Karmasathi (Parijayee Shramik) portal or app and log in with the mobile number and OTP used at registration.
2. Go to the applicant's dashboard or "track application" option and look up the record by MWIN if one has already been issued, or by the Aadhaar and mobile number entered at the time of registration if approval is still pending.
3. The status shown will read as one of a few plain states: registration submitted and awaiting verification by the Inspector of Minimum Wages, registration approved with the MWIN displayed, or registration returned for correction, in which case the specific field flagged should be fixed and resubmitted rather than filed as a fresh application.
4. For a claim filed after a death, repatriation, cremation or disability event, the same portal shows whether the claim is pending verification by the Assistant Labour Commissioner, sanctioned, or paid to the nominee's bank account.

A worker or family member who cannot check online, which is common since the person following up is often in the village while the worker is out of state, can ask at the district labour office or the office of the Assistant Labour Commissioner having jurisdiction over the worker's permanent West Bengal address. Quoting the MWIN speeds this up considerably; without it, staff have to search by the worker's name and Aadhaar, which takes longer and is more error prone when there are common names on the register.

There is no separate SMS or call-based status check published for this scheme, and no dedicated toll-free helpline listed by the Labour Department for it. Where a status has not moved for several weeks, either at registration or after a claim is filed, the correct next step is the grievance facility on the Karmasathi portal itself, quoting the MWIN, rather than filing a duplicate registration or a second claim for the same event, both of which slow the case down rather than speed it up.