AIBE ADR questions: one of the steadiest rows

You cannot carry every Bare Act into the hall. Something has to come out of the bag, and a four mark subject is usually the first thing anyone cuts.

Before you cut this one, look at how its questions are written. Six of the eight recent alternative dispute resolution questions we examined print the section number inside the question. The paper tells you where to look.

The short version

• The Bar Council of India's published syllabus allocates 4 questions to this row.
• Across the newest five papers, AIBE XVII to XXI, we counted 18. That is an average of 3.6.
• Every paper from AIBE X in 2017 onwards has asked either 3 or 4. That is twelve papers in a row inside a two question band, which makes this one of the steadiest rows on the paper.
• Across all 19 papers we counted 72, an average of 3.8.
• The row is wider than the Arbitration and Conciliation Act, 1996. It also covers conciliation, mediation, Lok Adalats and alternative dispute resolution in general, and two of our eight recent stems are general questions with no statute in them at all.
• Not one of those eight stems names a case.

What the Bar Council says this subject is worth

The current syllabus is a one page table titled "Syllabus for All India Bar Exam-XXI", published on the official exam site on 2 March 2026. This is its row, reproduced exactly as printed:

Read the word "including". The row is a bucket, not a statute. The Arbitration Act is named as the largest thing in it, not as the whole of it. Alternative dispute resolution is the heading, and arbitration is one route through it.

So our category follows the row rather than the Act. It counts questions on arbitration, on conciliation, on mediation, on Lok Adalats and on alternative dispute resolution as a subject, because all of those sit under that heading. If we counted only the 1996 Act we would be measuring something the Bar Council is not promising.

The same table was published for AIBE XX on 27 September 2025, identical row for row. This allocation has been printed twice and has not moved.

What 19 real papers actually show

The Bar Council publishes the past papers and the official answer keys. It does not publish which question belongs to which subject. So we classified all 1,900 questions in our 19 papers ourselves, reading by hand every question a pattern could not settle.

Split by era, this row looks like this:

And paper by paper:

Sixteen of the 19 papers asked either 3 or 4. The three that did not are AIBE V in 2013 and AIBE VII in 2014, which asked 2 each, and AIBE III in 2012, which asked 8.

That one paper in 2012 is the only time this row has ever run away with the marks, and it is fourteen years old.

Has this changed since the older papers

Almost not at all, which is unusual and worth saying out loud.

The seven oldest papers average 3.9. The seven middle papers average 3.9. The newest five average 3.6. There is no drift here in either direction, only a slight softening of about a third of a question in the recent era.

Compare that with company law, where the same table also prints a fixed number and our count falls from 3.2 across all 19 papers to 2.2 across the newest five. Or with the Constitution, which the table gives 10 and which averages 13.8 on the newest five papers.

The practical effect is that old papers are honest practice for this row. If you sit AIBE XII from 2018, you will meet four alternative dispute resolution questions, which is what AIBE XXII is likely to ask you. That is not true of every subject on this paper.

What actually gets asked

These are real questions from our set, quoted exactly as printed.

According to Section 25(b) of the Arbitration and Conciliation Act, 1996, where the respondent fails to submit his statement of defence without sufficient cause, the arbitral tribunal shall:

In the absence of an agreement between the parties, the arbitration proceedings are said to have commenced under Section 21 of The Arbitration and Conciliation Act, 1996 :

Which of the following is a characteristic of mediation?

We looked closely at eight stems from AIBE XIX, XX and XXI. Three patterns come out of them.

The question tells you where to look. Six of the eight print a section number in the stem itself: Sections 5, 20, 21, 25(a), 25(b) and 37 of the 1996 Act. You are not being asked to find the provision. You are being asked what it says. That is the single best case for carrying a book that exists on this paper.

Section 25 was asked twice, in consecutive papers. AIBE XX in 2025 asked what happens when the claimant fails to submit his statement of claim without sufficient cause, which is Section 25(a). AIBE XXI in 2026 asked what happens when the respondent fails to submit his statement of defence, which is Section 25(b). Two halves of the same section, one year apart.

Nobody is asking about cases. Not one of the eight stems names a judgment. Every one of them is answerable either from the text of the Act or from knowing what a form of alternative dispute resolution is.

The two that are not in the Act are worth naming, because they are the part a book cannot rescue. AIBE XIX asked which of a list is a characteristic of mediation, and separately which of a list is not an advantage of using alternative dispute resolution. Those are definitional questions about the subject as a whole, and no Bare Act contains them.

What to revise, and what to skip

Learn the spine of the 1996 Act, not its text. Since the questions print their own section numbers and you may carry the Act in, what earns marks is being able to open the right page inside a minute. The sections our recent stems used cluster in the procedural middle of the Act: the limits on court intervention, the place of arbitration, when proceedings commence, what happens when a party defaults, and which orders can be appealed.

Put the general definitions in your head. What mediation is, what conciliation is, what Lok Adalats do, what alternative dispute resolution is for and what it is not good at. Two of our eight stems sat there, and they are the two you cannot look up. On a four mark row, that is half your marks with nothing on the desk to help you.

Skip case law for this subject. Our sample is eight questions out of 72, so treat this as a strong hint rather than a law, but not one of those eight needed a judgment.

Skip reading the Act end to end. It is four marks. Knowing the shape of it beats knowing a third of it perfectly.

Do not skip the old papers here. For most subjects we would tell you the older papers give you the wrong mix. For this one they do not.

Does this subject earn space in your bag

Yes, and it is one of the easier calls on the list.

The reasoning is in the stems, not in the count. Four marks is a small row, but the Arbitration and Conciliation Act, 1996 is a thin book, and the questions hand you the section number. A book is worth carrying when the answer is written down and you already know which page it is on. Six of our eight recent stems meet both tests.

Be clear about what it will not do. The mediation and general alternative dispute resolution questions are inside this row and outside the Act, so the book covers most of the row and not all of it.

One rule about the copy you take. The Bar Council's Examination Guidelines say candidates may carry "only BARE ACTS (without notes and comments)". Possession of anything else in the hall is itself a stated risk, not just using it. We have written the carry-in rules up in full, including the second Bar Council document that softens them and the things no document mentions at all, in what you can carry into the AIBE.

What these numbers do not tell you

• The classification is ours. The Bar Council does not publish one. Where a question sits on a border between subjects, our call is a judgement.
• We do not publish a split inside the bucket. Our count follows the Bar Council's row, so arbitration, conciliation, mediation and Lok Adalat questions are counted together. We can show you which of the eight quoted stems are not about the 1996 Act, but we cannot give you a reliable percentage across all 72.
• One set per edition. Each AIBE paper is printed in four sets, A to D. We hold one set for each edition, mostly Set A. We cannot show whether the other sets ask the same questions in a different order, so we do not claim it.
• Eight stems is a sample. The patterns above come from eight questions in three papers, chosen because they are the most recent. They describe those eight honestly. They do not prove anything about the other 64.
• Counts are not difficulty. A reliable 4 questions is not the same as 4 easy ones.

Where these facts come from

The syllabus row is the Bar Council's own, quoted from Syllabus for All India Bar Exam-XXI, published on the official exam site on 2 March 2026 and identical to the AIBE XX syllabus of 27 September 2025. The carry-in wording is from the Examination Guidelines for AIBE XXI, published 20 February 2026.

The question counts are ours. They come from 19 real AIBE past papers held on munotes, 1,900 questions in total, classified by us and counted on 23 September 2026. The three quoted stems are reproduced exactly as printed: AIBE XXI question 51, AIBE XX question 57 and AIBE XIX question 47. The other stems referred to are AIBE XXI questions 67 and 83, AIBE XX questions 25 and 71, and AIBE XIX question 49. We have rounded nothing up, and every count here can be checked by sitting the paper.

What to do next

The next exam is AIBE XXII on 29 November 2026. Registration opened on 19 August 2026 and closes on 27 October 2026.

Since six of these questions in eight print their own section number, the thing to test is not whether you know the Act. It is whether you can find Section 25 in your own copy while a clock is running. That is a physical skill, and it is slower than everyone expects the first time.

Sit AIBE XXI with your Bare Act beside you and time it. All 19 AIBE previous year question papers are on munotes as timed practice: 100 questions, a three hour timer, and answers taken from the Bar Council's official keys. Lifetime access to all 19 is Rs 499, paid once.