Certain aspects of the present disclosure relate to techniques and apparatus for design of hybrid automatic repeat request (HARQ) feedback bits. The method generally includes obtaining a payload to be transmitted, partitioning the payload into a plurality of blocks, and partitioning each block of the plurality of blocks into a plurality of sections. The method also includes deriving redundancy check information for each section of the plurality of sections, and generating a plurality of codewords, each comprising a block of the plurality of blocks and the redundancy check information for each section of the block, wherein a location of each of the sections in the codewords is determined based on an error rate corresponding to each of the sections.