Two things about this changed on 21 November 2025 and they change the answer people were given for decades. The Industrial Disputes Act, 1947 stands repealed, and the timelines under the Industrial Relations Code, 2020 are shorter than the three year period that older advice assumed. Anyone still working to a three year clock is working to a repealed one.
Step one: is there an internal committee
Every industrial establishment employing twenty or more workers must have one or more Grievance Redressal Committees for individual grievances, made up of equal numbers representing the employer and the workers and capped at ten members. An aggrieved worker may apply to that Committee within one year of the cause of action arising, and the Committee may complete its proceedings within thirty days. If you are dissatisfied with its decision, or it does not decide within that period, you have sixty days to take the grievance to conciliation.
You do not need a union behind you and you do not need other workers to join. The Code says that where an employer discharges, dismisses, retrenches or otherwise terminates the services of an individual worker, the dispute between that worker and the employer connected with the termination shall be deemed to be an industrial dispute, notwithstanding that no other worker and no Trade Union is a party. That provision is the whole basis on which one person can run this machinery.
Step two: conciliation
The appropriate Government appoints conciliation officers charged with mediating in and promoting the settlement of industrial disputes, either for an area or for specified industries. For a private employer in Bengaluru that is the State Government, so the officer sits in the Karnataka Labour Department, and the jurisdiction is territorial. The officer investigates without delay, tries to bring the parties to a settlement, and either records a settlement signed by both sides or sends a failure report setting out what was done and why no settlement was reached. The report is due within forty five days of the proceedings commencing, or a shorter period fixed by the appropriate Government, and can be extended only by written agreement of the parties with the officer's approval.
Step three: the Tribunal
The appropriate Government constitutes one or more Industrial Tribunals. Each has a Judicial Member and an Administrative Member, and a bench of both must hear the cases that matter most here: standing orders, discharge or dismissal including reinstatement, the legality of a strike or lock-out, retrenchment and closure, and Trade Union disputes. Where the dispute involves discharge, dismissal or other termination and the Tribunal is satisfied the order was not justified, it may set the order aside, direct reinstatement on such terms as it thinks fit, or give other relief including a lesser punishment.
Two years. A conciliation officer shall not hold conciliation proceedings relating to an industrial dispute after two years from the date on which the dispute arose. Miss that and the door to conciliation closes, and with it the ordinary route to the Tribunal.
Ninety days. Any concerned party may apply to the Tribunal in the matters not settled by the conciliation officer within ninety days from the date on which the failure report is received. Diarise the date you receive that report on the day it arrives.
Separately, a worker who has gone through the Grievance Redressal Committee route must make the application to the Tribunal before the expiry of two years from the date of the discharge, dismissal, retrenchment or other termination.
The Karnataka picture, forum by forum
| What you are claiming | Where it goes | Outer limit |
|---|---|---|
| Dismissal, retrenchment or termination as a worker | Conciliation officer, then the Industrial Tribunal | Two years to conciliation, ninety days from the failure report |
| Individual grievance in an establishment of twenty or more workers | Grievance Redressal Committee | One year from the cause of action |
| Unpaid wages, wrongful deduction, minimum wages | The authority appointed under the Code on Wages, 2019 | Three years, extendable on sufficient cause |
| Gratuity | The competent authority under the gratuity chapter of the Code on Social Security, 2020 | Determined by that chapter, and an appeal in sixty days |
| Removal or dismissal from a shop or commercial establishment | Appeal to the prescribed authority under the Karnataka Shops and Commercial Establishments Act, 1961 | Fixed by the Karnataka rules and short, so check it the same week |
Two practical cautions. First, all of this assumes you are a worker, which excludes a person employed mainly in a managerial or administrative capacity and a person in a supervisory capacity drawing wages above eighteen thousand rupees a month or such amount as the Central Government notifies. Our note on whether you count as a worker under the Industrial Relations Code is where to test that before you file anywhere. Second, identify the correct employer before you file, because a claim brought against the wrong entity burns time you may not have under a two year limit.
Assemble the same annexures whichever door you use: the appointment and revision letters, the last payslips, the termination or resignation correspondence, proof of the last working day, and your written demand with its delivery proof. Our guide on wrongful termination and employee rights in India sets the remedies out in sequence, and our overview of what the four labour codes changed for employees explains why the older material you will find online still names forums and limitation periods that no longer exist.