Days after the high court issued notice on a petition challenging the constitution of the Punjab Building and Other Construction Workers’ Welfare Board, the state government has maintained that the board was validly constituted under the Code on Social Security, 2020, and that the March 17 notification’s reference to the repealed Building and Other Construction Workers Act, 1996, was merely a “clerical error”.
According to the documents, accessed by HT, the government described the incorrect reference in the March 17, 2026 notification as an “inadvertent clerical/typographical error” that did not reflect the state’s intent. The documents, signed by labour secretary Manvesh Singh Sidhu, form part of the government’s reply filed in the high court ahead of the next hearing on August 10. The petitioners’ counsel has also received a copy of the reply.
The documents state that the board was always intended to be constituted under Section 7 of the Code on Social Security, 2020, which empowers the state government to do so.
“However, the original notification mistakenly referred to Section 18 of the 1996 Act,” the reply states, adding that the notification cannot be treated as void merely because of an incorrect statutory reference.
The reply further said that the error was detected immediately and rectified on the same day through a corrigendum issued on March 17, 2026.
{{/usCountry}}The reply further said that the error was detected immediately and rectified on the same day through a corrigendum issued on March 17, 2026.
{{/usCountry}}“The corrigendum substituted the reference to Section 18 of the 1996 Act with Section 7 of the Code on Social Security, 2020,” the documents state.
The clarification comes after the high court on July 23 issued notice on a petition filed by the Patiala-based Dr Ambedkar Workers Union, contending that the board had been constituted under the Building and Other Construction Workers (Regulation of Employment and Conditions of Service) Act, 1996, which stands repealed and merged with the Code on Social Security Act, 2020 that came into effect in November 2025.
The court had also stayed the diversion of funds from the construction workers’ welfare corpus for any scheme, including the Punjab government’s Mawan Dheeyan Satkar Yojana.
The government said that the mistake was purely technical and stood corrected through the corrigendum issued on the same day as the notification, and therefore does not affect the validity of the board’s constitution.
“It is a settled principle of law that a clerical or typographical mistake, which is promptly corrected through a corrigendum, does not invalidate an otherwise lawful exercise of statutory power,” said a senior official of the board, requesting anonymity.