AIBE contract questions: the 8 is shared, not contract's

You have seen it written everywhere that contract law is worth 8 questions in the AIBE. Then you count the contract questions in the last paper and find three. Nothing has gone wrong. The 8 was never contract's alone.

The Bar Council puts four statutes in one row and gives the row 8 questions. We counted all four across 19 real AIBE papers, from AIBE III in 2012 to AIBE XXI sat on 7 June 2026. Across the newest five the row lands on 7.8 a paper, and contract is a little under half of it.

The short version

• The Bar Council's syllabus row is shared. One row, 8 questions, four statutes named in it.
• Across the newest five papers, AIBE XVII to XXI, the four together average 7.8 a paper. Two of the five asked exactly 8.
• The Indian Contract Act by itself averages 3.4 there. That is not a shortfall. It is one part of a row worth 8.
• Property, negotiable instruments and specific relief make up the rest, at about 1.5 questions each.
• This row has shrunk more than any other we have counted. In the seven oldest papers it averaged 17.7 questions a paper. AIBE V, in 2013, asked 17 contract questions on its own.
• The recent contract questions cluster at the front of the Act: offer, acceptance, consideration. Several ask for a section number outright.

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. Row 17 reads, exactly as printed, spelling included:

Four statutes. One number. The Bar Council does not say how the 8 is divided between them, and nothing published says it has to be divided the same way twice.

This is the single most misread row on the AIBE syllabus. Coaching pages routinely print "Contract Law: 8" as if the row belonged to the Indian Contract Act, 1872, and then a candidate spends eight marks worth of hours on a statute that has asked three or four questions in every paper since AIBE XVI in 2021.

It is not the only shared row either. Tort shares one with the Motor Vehicles Act and consumer protection law, for 5 between them. Read the whole row, always.

The same row appeared in the AIBE XX syllabus of 27 September 2025, identical. Two exams, one wording.

What 19 real papers actually show

The Bar Council publishes the papers and the official answer keys, but not which question belongs to which subject. So we classified all 1,900 questions in our 19 papers ourselves, reading by hand every one a pattern could not settle. Our categories are finer than the Bar Council's, so we roll our four buckets up into its one row before saying anything about the number 8.

Here is the whole row, by era:

Read the bottom row and then ignore it. The 11.7 is an average of two different exams: an old one that asked this material constantly and a current one that asks it eight times. The figure that describes the paper you are about to sit is 7.8.

Those 40 questions break down as contract 17, property 8, negotiable instruments 8 and specific relief 7. Paper by paper the row went 8, 8, 9, 7 and 7, newest first, so two of the five land exactly on 8. Contract is the largest part of the row and not a majority, and the other three run at about one and a half questions a paper each.

Has this changed since the older papers

More than any subject we have counted.

Every paper up to 2016 asked 14 or more. Every paper since 2017 has asked 10 or fewer. The change happened once, between AIBE IX and AIBE X, and it has held for twelve editions.

The Indian Contract Act took most of that cut. It averaged 10.0 questions a paper across the seven oldest papers and averages 3.4 across the newest five. AIBE V in 2013 asked 17 contract questions in one paper, more than the whole row is worth today.

So if you are practising on free old papers, which is most of what circulates, you are practising an exam where nearly a fifth of the marks came from this row. Today it is 8 marks out of 100.

What actually gets asked

We read seven contract stems closely: four from AIBE XX and three from AIBE XIX, which is every contract question we counted in those two papers. AIBE XXI's three are not among them. Three of the seven, quoted exactly as printed:

According to the Indian Contract Act, 1872, when is the communication of an acceptance complete against the proposer?

The Indian Contract Act, 1872, provides for specific situations where an agreement without consideration is not void. Which of the following agreements is valid despite the lack of fresh consideration ?

Which section of Law of Contract defines, "A proposal may be revoked at any time, before the communication of its acceptance is complete as against the proposer, but not afterwards."?

Three patterns come out of those seven.

Everything is at the front of the Act. Five of the seven are about the basics: communication of acceptance, an acceptance that adds a new term, agreements valid without fresh consideration, revocation of a proposal, and where a void agreement is defined. The other two are about guarantee and co-sureties. Nothing in our seven asks about frustration, damages or quasi-contract.

Three of the seven ask for a section number. AIBE XIX did it three times in three questions: "An agreement not enforceable by law is stated to be void under ---------------", "The concept of invalid guarantee is covered under Sections ------------", and the revocation question quoted above. Those are not tests of understanding. They are tests of whether you can use an index under time pressure.

The stems quote the Act back at you. The revocation question prints the statutory words and asks only for the number. With a clean Bare Act and a sense of how it is arranged, that is a mark in under a minute. Without one, it is a mark you cannot reason your way to.

What to revise, and what to skip

Budget eight marks for the whole row, not for contract. That is the correction this page exists to make. Four statutes, 8 marks between them, contract about three or four of them.

Do the opening of the Contract Act properly. Offer, acceptance, communication, revocation, consideration and its exceptions. Five of our seven recent stems live there, and that is the wording the questions quote back at you.

Give the other three statutes an hour each. Property, negotiable instruments and specific relief have run at roughly one and a half questions a paper each since 2023. An hour each is proportionate. A week on the Transfer of Property Act is not.

Practise finding a section, not memorising one. Three of seven recent stems were section number questions. That skill is built with the book open and a clock running, and it is the highest return thing you can do for this row.

What to skip: the old papers, for this row above all others. A 2013 or 2014 paper hands you 17 to 21 questions of this material. The exam you are sitting gives 8. Those papers will make you good at a subject that has been cut by more than half, and leave you short on the Constitution, which the same syllabus prices at 10 and which has averaged 13.8 across the newest five papers.

Does this row earn space in your bag

The Contract Act, yes. All four books, no. This is our judgement from the counts and the stems, not a Bar Council instruction.

The Indian Contract Act, 1872 earns its place on the shape of its questions, not the size of its count. Three or four a paper, most from the front of the Act, several asking for a section number, and one printing the statutory language and asking you to name it. That is the best case for an open book there is, and it is one thin statute.

The other three are harder to justify. One and a half questions each, and each a full Act. If you own clean copies and have the space, take them, because these questions are textual and a book answers them. If you are choosing what to leave behind, they go before the Civil Procedure Code or the criminal codes. A property question you cannot look up is still worth a guess, because the AIBE XXI question booklet says in as many words: "There is no negative marking."

One rule about the copies you take. The Bar Council's Examination Guidelines say candidates may carry "only BARE ACTS (without notes and comments)", and possession of anything else in the hall is itself a stated risk, not just using it. That rules out the annotated student editions of the Contract Act that most of us own. The carry in rules are written 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 publishes one row for four statutes, so the split inside the row is entirely our reading of each question.
• We know of one error in this bucket. A question from AIBE XVIII, "What is the meaning of the batil marriage in Muslim Law?", sits in our contract count and is plainly family law. One misfile in 112 moves the average by less than a tenth of a question, and we would rather show you the error than quietly patch it.
• One set per edition. Each AIBE paper is printed in four sets, A to D. We hold one per edition, mostly Set A, and cannot show what the others ask.
• Seven stems is a sample. Every pattern above rests on seven questions from two papers. They prove nothing about the other 105.
• Counts are not difficulty, and a row that lands on 8 three times running is not a promise it will land there again.

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. "Negotiable Instrument Act" is the Bar Council's spelling and we have reproduced it rather than tidied it. The carry in wording is from the Examination Guidelines for AIBE XXI, published 20 February 2026, and the negative marking line is on the first page of the AIBE XXI question booklet, Set A, for the exam of 7 June 2026.

The counts are ours, from 19 real AIBE past papers held on munotes, 1,900 questions in total, classified by us and counted on 23 September 2026. The quoted stems are reproduced exactly as printed, spacing included: AIBE XX questions 41 and 54, sat 30 November 2025, and AIBE XIX question 96, sat in 2024. The other stems named are AIBE XIX questions 89 and 90 and AIBE XX question 88. We have rounded nothing up, and every count can be checked by sitting the paper.

What to do next

The next exam is AIBE XXII on 29 November 2026. Registration closes on 27 October 2026.

Two things follow, and the first is free. Rewrite your timetable so this row gets eight marks of attention spread across four statutes instead of eight marks of attention on one.

The second is to test the section number skill, because that is what three of seven recent questions here actually measure. 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.