AIBE CPC questions: the syllabus says 10 and it means it

Most pages about AIBE weightage exist to tell you the published numbers are wrong. Here is one where they are right.

The Bar Council of India's syllabus gives the Code of Civil Procedure 10 questions out of 100. We counted the CPC questions in 19 real AIBE papers, from AIBE III in 2012 to AIBE XXI sat on 7 June 2026. Across the five newest papers the average is 10.2. The last three papers asked exactly 10 each.

So you can plan this subject from the syllabus row and it will not mislead you. That is worth knowing, because it is not true of every row.

The short version

• The Bar Council's published syllabus allocates 10 questions to the CPC.
• Across the newest five papers, AIBE XVII to XXI, we counted 51. That is an average of 10.2.
• AIBE XIX, AIBE XX and AIBE XXI each asked exactly 10.
• Across all 19 papers we counted 183, an average of 9.6. Only the Constitution gave us more.
• The old papers were lighter on it, not heavier. Nothing here has drifted upward.
• Not one of the eight recent CPC questions we examined closely names a case. They are text questions, which makes a clean CPC the best value book in your bag.

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. The CPC gets its own row, on its own, with no other statute bundled into it:

That matters more than it sounds. Several rows of that table cover more than one subject at once. The row for the law of tort also carries the Motor Vehicles Act and consumer protection, all for 5 questions between them. The contract row carries specific relief, property law and the Negotiable Instrument Act, all for 8. The CPC row carries the CPC. So when the table says 10, there is no sharing to work out.

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 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, the CPC looks like this:

And paper by paper:

Fifteen of the 19 papers land between 9 and 11. The four that do not are AIBE VII with 5, AIBE VIII with 7 and AIBE IX with 8, all from 2014 to 2016, and AIBE XVIII with 12. There is no paper in our set where the CPC ran away with the marks.

We went looking for a gap here and did not find one. That is the finding.

Has this changed since the older papers

Only in the direction of getting closer to the published number.

The seven oldest papers average 8.9, a little over one question light. The seven middle papers average exactly 10.0. The newest five average 10.2. The three most recent papers we hold, AIBE XIX in 2024, AIBE XX in 2025 and AIBE XXI in June 2026, each asked exactly 10.

Compare that with the Constitution, where we counted 10.4 per paper across the oldest seven and 13.8 across the newest five. Both subjects carry the same figure on the Bar Council's table. Only one of them has stayed there.

That is the practical reason to read a page like this. Two rows that look identical on the syllabus are not worth the same number of hours.

What actually gets asked

These are real questions from AIBE XXI and AIBE XX, quoted exactly as printed.

Under Section 35B of the Code of Civil Procedure, 1908, where a party fails to take a step required by the court on the date fixed, the court may:

Under Section 58 of the Code of Civil Procedure, 1908, what is the maximum period of detention in civil prison for a decree amount exceeding 5,000?

In execution proceedings governed by the Code of Civil Procedure, 1908, where property of the judgment-debtor is attached and a third party raises a claim asserting independent title, such claim:

We looked closely at eight CPC stems from the two newest papers. Three patterns come out of them, and all three are useful.

Nobody is asking you about cases. Not one of the eight names a judgment. Every one of them is answerable from the text of the Code by a person who can find the right provision.

Half of them are "what can the court do". Four of the eight end by asking what the court may do in a situation: when a defendant has been wrongly impleaded, when a party misses a step, when a suit has abated because legal representatives were not brought on record in time, when the plaintiff has not paid the court fee or postal charges for service of summons. The answer is always a power, and powers are printed.

Execution keeps coming up. Three of the eight are execution questions: attachment and a third party claim, security when an execution order is challenged in appeal, and the detention question quoted above.

There is also a question type worth being warned about. AIBE XX asked how many High Court Judges make up the judicial membership of the Rule Committee. That is a number printed in the Code, and it is not something anyone revises. It is a mark you either look up or lose.

What to revise, and what to skip

Spend ten marks worth of time on it. No more. The CPC is a large Code and it will absorb any amount of reading you give it, and the return stops at 10. If your timetable currently gives the CPC more hours than the Constitution, swap them.

Learn the shape of the Code, not the Code. Since the questions are lookups and you may carry the Act in, what earns marks is knowing roughly where a thing lives so you can reach it in under a minute. Orders and sections in the right order beats reading the text twice.

Execution, properly. Three of our eight recent stems sat there. It is also the part of the Code most students leave until last.

The printed numbers. Time limits, monetary thresholds, periods of detention, committee sizes. These are the questions that make the book worth carrying, and they are also the ones you will never remember.

What to skip: case law for the CPC. Our sample is eight questions out of 183, so treat this as a strong hint and not a law, but not one of those eight needed a judgment. Compared with the Constitution, where half the recent questions we looked at turned on a named case, this is a different kind of subject and it rewards a different kind of preparation.

Also skip drilling the very old papers for this subject. AIBE VII in 2014 asked 5 CPC questions. The current exam asks 10. Old papers give you a lighter CPC than the one you are about to sit.

Which Bare Act to carry

The Code of Civil Procedure, 1908, clean, and on our evidence it is the best value book in the bag.

The reasoning is in the stems, not in the count. Ten questions is the joint largest allocation on the syllabus, and this is the subject where the questions are almost purely textual: a section number, a situation, a power, a printed figure. A book helps most when the answer is written down somewhere and you know where. Compare the Constitution, where half the recent questions ask what a case decided and no book on your desk will tell you.

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.
• 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 in the section above come from eight questions in two papers, chosen because they are the most recent. They describe those eight honestly. They do not prove anything about the other 175.
• Counts are not difficulty. A reliable 10 questions is not the same as 10 easy ones.

Where these facts come from

The syllabus row and the wording of the other rows are 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 questions 61 and 5, and AIBE XX question 21. The Rule Committee question is AIBE XX question 18. 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 the CPC questions are lookups, the thing to test is not whether you know the Code. It is whether you can find a provision 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.