You sat down to revise evidence for the AIBE and found two statutes with the same job. The Indian Evidence Act, 1872 is what you were taught. The Bharatiya Sakshya Adhiniyam, 2023 is what replaced it. Which one does the exam ask?
Both. In the same paper. We counted the evidence questions in 19 real AIBE papers, from AIBE III in 2012 to AIBE XXI sat on 7 June 2026, and the newest paper of all asks a question on the new statute and a question on the old one.
The size of the subject has not moved. Only the statute printed in the question has.
The short version
- The Bar Council's published syllabus allocates 8 questions to this subject, under a heading that names both statutes.
- Across the newest five papers, AIBE XVII to XXI, we counted 41. That is an average of 8.2, which is the stated figure plus a rounding error.
- Four of those five papers asked exactly 8. The fifth asked 9. No paper since 2023 has strayed.
- Across all 19 papers we counted 137, an average of 7.2. The old papers were lighter, not heavier.
- The changeover is not clean. AIBE XXI, in June 2026, asked four questions naming the Bharatiya Sakshya Adhiniyam and one naming the Indian Evidence Act, 1872, out of the six of its eight we hold in front of us.
- The questions are textual. Half of the recent stems we read name the exact section they are testing and ask what is in it, which makes a clean copy of the statute worth its weight.
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 5 reads, exactly as printed:
| Topic / Subject | Questions |
|---|---|
| Evidence Act & (New) Bharatiya Sakshya Adhiniyam | 8 |
Read the heading before you plan around it. It is one row, worth 8 questions, and it names both statutes with an ampersand between them. The Bar Council has not taken the Evidence Act off its syllabus. It has put the Adhiniyam beside it.
The same row appeared in the AIBE XX syllabus of 27 September 2025. Two exams, one wording.
If you go looking for this yourself, be careful which page you land on. The Bar Council of India's own website carries an AIBE page whose address still ends "aibe-xvii". It prints an older syllabus naming the Indian Penal Code and the Criminal Procedure Code and no Sanhitas at all, and is out of date on other things too. It is a primary source and it is stale. The syllabus PDF on the exam site, dated 2 March 2026, is the current one.
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. We counted Evidence Act and Bharatiya Sakshya Adhiniyam questions together, because the Bar Council's own row counts them together.
| Papers | Evidence questions | Average per paper | Against the stated 8 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Oldest seven, AIBE III to IX (2012 to 2016) | 44 | 6.3 | -1.7 |
| Middle seven, AIBE X to XVI (2017 to 2021) | 52 | 7.4 | -0.6 |
| Newest five, AIBE XVII to XXI (2023 to 2026) | 41 | 8.2 | +0.2 |
| All 19 papers | 137 | 7.2 | -0.8 |
And paper by paper:
Seventeen of the 19 papers land between 6 and 9. The two that do not are AIBE III and AIBE VII, which asked 4 each, and both are more than a decade old. Since 2023 the subject has been 8 or 9 every single time.
That makes evidence one of the most predictable rows on the paper: budget eight marks and you will be right.
The changeover, as the papers show it
This part needs both eras of paper side by side.
Our two newest papers give us eight evidence stems: six of the eight questions in AIBE XXI, and two from AIBE XX. Of those eight, four name the Bharatiya Sakshya Adhiniyam, 2023. Three name the Indian Evidence Act, 1872. One names neither statute and asks about a Supreme Court judgment instead.
Both AIBE XX stems we hold name the Indian Evidence Act, 1872, in a paper sat on 30 November 2025.
The sharpest illustration is inside one paper. AIBE XXI asked this:
Which of the following is not stated in Section 63(4) of the Bharatiya Sakshya Adhiniyam, 2023, with regard to a certificate to verify the authenticity of electronic evidence?
And, in the same hundred questions, this:
Which of the following statements is not true with respect to Section 65B of the Indian Evidence Act, 1872?
One question on a section of the new statute, one on a section of the old one, on the same desk on the same morning. Anyone who told you the Evidence Act is finished would have cost you a mark in June 2026.
That paper also asks, in its own words, "The Bharatiya Sakshya Adhiniyam, 2023 is not applicable in which case?" So the exam is not only asking what the new statute says. It is asking where it reaches.
What actually gets asked
Here is a third real stem, this one from AIBE XX, quoted exactly as printed:
What condition must be satisfied for prior evidence to be relevant under Section 33 of the Indian Evidence Act, 1872?
Two patterns come out of the eight stems we read closely, and both are useful.
Half of them hand you the section number. Four of the eight name a specific provision: Section 2 and Section 63(4) of the Adhiniyam, Section 65B and Section 33 of the Evidence Act. You are not being asked to recall where a rule lives. You are being asked what it says once you are there. The other four name the statute but not the section, so you have to know the ground well enough to find it. That is the ideal shape for an open book exam, and it is why this subject rewards a clean statute more than almost any other.
The question is usually negative. Five of our eight stems ask which option is not stated, not true, not a document, not applicable, or does not fall under a framework. In a three hour paper, misreading one of those costs a mark you had already earned. Slow down on the word "not".
One question in eight went outside the text entirely: "The five Golden Principles with respect to Circumstantial Evidence were laid down in which Supreme Court Judgment?" No Bare Act answers that. It is a recall question wearing a statute's clothes, and there is at least one of them in a recent paper.
What to revise, and what to skip
Revise both statutes, and do not treat one as a translation of the other. The syllabus row names both. The last paper asked both. Until a paper appears that asks the Adhiniyam alone, preparing only one of them is preparing for eight marks with half a book.
Learn where things sit, not what they say. Since the stems hand you the section number, the skill being tested is finding a numbered provision fast and reading it accurately under time pressure. That is a physical skill with your own copy, and it is slower than everyone expects the first time.
Give it eight marks of your time. No more. Evidence is a subject that can absorb an entire week. The return stops at 8, and it has stopped there in every paper since 2023. Compare the Constitution, where the same syllabus table says 10 and the newest five papers average 13.8. If your timetable gives evidence more hours than the Constitution, swap them.
What to skip: chasing case law for this subject. One of our eight recent stems needed a judgment. That is a real risk and a small one, and it is a poor use of the hours compared with knowing your way around two statutes.
Also skip drilling the oldest papers for evidence. AIBE III and AIBE VII asked four questions each, and every one of them was written under the 1872 Act alone. Old papers give you a lighter and older version of the subject you are about to sit.
Does this subject earn space in your bag
Yes, and on our evidence it is one of the strongest claims in the bag. This is a judgement, not a Bar Council instruction, and here is the reasoning.
Eight questions is a middling allocation. What raises it is the shape of the questions: half the stems we read name the exact provision they are testing. A book earns its place when the answer is written down and you know where. Compare the Constitution, where a large share of recent questions turn on what a case decided and no book will tell you.
The awkward part is that the row covers two statutes, so a complete answer is two books. We would carry both. The Bar Council has published nothing on how many Bare Acts you may bring, so the limit in practice is your bag and your desk, not a rule.
One warning about the copy you carry. The 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. Many editions sold for this changeover print a comparison table mapping old sections to new ones. That table is exactly the kind of thing an invigilator could call a note or a comment, and no Bar Council document says either way. 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 per edition, mostly Set A, and cannot show what the others ask.
- Eight stems is a sample. The split between the two statutes, and every pattern above, rests on eight questions from the two newest papers. They prove nothing about the other 129.
- We do not say what any provision contains. We know which sections the papers name. What Section 63(4), Section 65B or Section 33 says is in your Bare Act, not in our count.
- Counts are not difficulty. A reliable 8 questions is not the same as 8 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 stale page is the Bar Council of India's own AIBE page on barcouncilofindia.org, the one whose address still ends "aibe-xvii" and still prints the AIBE XVII syllabus.
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: AIBE XXI questions 89 and 96, sat 7 June 2026, and AIBE XX question 12, sat 30 November 2025. The circumstantial evidence question is AIBE XXI question 82 and the applicability question is question 24 of the same paper. 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.
For this subject the thing to test is not whether you know the law of evidence. It is whether you can open the right statute at the right section while a clock is running, and whether you notice the word "not" when you are eighty questions in and tired.
Sit AIBE XXI with both statutes 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.