Labour law is four marks in the AIBE, and the four that cost the most preparation time per mark. The Bar Council's syllabus row is three words long and names no statute. The questions come from six different laws, including a Code made in 2020 and an Act from 1948, and most of them ask for a number you either know or do not.
We counted the labour and industrial law questions in 19 real AIBE papers, from AIBE III in 2012 to AIBE XXI sat on 7 June 2026. The count is steady, small and spread thin.
The short version
- The Bar Council's published syllabus allocates 4 questions to "Labour & Industrial Law", and names no statute.
- Across the newest five papers, AIBE XVII to XXI, we counted 19. That is an average of 3.8, a fifth of a question under the stated figure.
- Four of those five papers asked exactly 4. The fifth, AIBE XXI, asked 3.
- Across all 19 papers we counted 84, an average of 4.4. The subject has drifted gently down, never up.
- Six different laws turn up in the eight recent stems we read. That is the whole problem: four marks, no reading list.
- Five of those eight ask for a threshold printed in the statute: a period, a minimum number of workers, a minimum number of members.
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 14 reads, exactly as printed:
| Topic / Subject | Questions |
|---|---|
| Labour & Industrial Law | 4 |
That is the entire specification: three words and a number.
It matters that the row is silent, because other rows are not. The criminal procedure row names two codes. The evidence row names two statutes. Contract shares a row with three other named Acts. Labour law is handed over as a heading, and which Acts sit under it is left to you.
The same row appeared in the AIBE XX syllabus of 27 September 2025. The silence is settled, not an oversight in one edition.
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.
| Papers | Labour law questions | Average per paper | Against the stated 4 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Oldest seven, AIBE III to IX (2012 to 2016) | 36 | 5.1 | +1.1 |
| Middle seven, AIBE X to XVI (2017 to 2021) | 29 | 4.1 | +0.1 |
| Newest five, AIBE XVII to XXI (2023 to 2026) | 19 | 3.8 | -0.2 |
| All 19 papers | 84 | 4.4 | +0.4 |
And paper by paper:
Every paper since 2017 has asked between 3 and 5. Nothing has gone above 5 in nine years. It is one of the most stable rows on the paper, and stable at a small number.
Has this changed since the older papers
The count has barely moved. What is under it has.
The seven oldest papers average 5.1 questions, the middle seven 4.1, the newest five 3.8. That is a slow drift of about one question over fourteen years. Only two papers ever went far off the mark, AIBE V in 2013 with 7 and AIBE III in 2012 with 2, and both are more than a decade old. If you plan for 4 you are right more often than not.
The statutes are a different story. AIBE XXI, sat in June 2026, asked this:
Which of the following is not included in "The Industrial Relations Code, 2020"?
The 2020 labour codes have started appearing in the paper. At the same time, AIBE XIX in 2024 and AIBE XVIII in 2023 both asked questions under the Industrial Disputes Act, 1947. Both generations are being examined, and the syllabus row names neither.
That is the pattern the evidence and criminal law rows show, an old statute and its replacement asked in the same era. The difference is that those rows name both and this one names nothing, so nobody is warning candidates.
What actually gets asked
Two more real stems, quoted exactly as printed.
What should be the minimum number of workers originally employed in any factory for having at least one canteen in the factory as per the Factories Act, 1948?
According to the Payment of Gratuity Act, 1972, under what circumstance is the completion of five years of continuous service not mandatory for payment of gratuity to an employee by his employer ?
We read eight labour stems from the five newest papers. Three things come out of them.
Six different laws in eight questions. The Industrial Relations Code, 2020. The Payment of Gratuity Act, 1972. The Industrial Disputes Act, 1947, twice. The Maternity Benefit Act, 1961, twice. The Factories Act, 1948. And one question on the minimum membership needed to register a trade union, which names no Act at all. Five named statutes and a sixth body of law, for four marks, with no single statute supplying more than two of the eight.
Five of the eight want a printed threshold. The maximum period of maternity benefit. The leave with wages for a tubectomy operation. The minimum workers before a factory needs a canteen. The minimum members to register a trade union. The circumstance in which five years of continuous service is not required for gratuity. You do not reason these out. You look them up or lose them.
Half of them are negative. Four of the eight ask what is not included, what has not been set up, who is not a workman, when something is not mandatory. In a three hour paper that is where careless marks go.
In AIBE XVIII all four labour questions sat together, at questions 76 to 79, and came from three different statutes: two on the Maternity Benefit Act, one on the Factories Act, one on the Industrial Disputes Act. This subject can turn up as a block, so skipping it means skipping four questions in a row.
What to revise, and what to skip
Learn the thresholds, not the statutes. This is the whole subject. Periods, minimum numbers, qualifying service, entitlement limits. A single page of printed figures across the main labour Acts is worth more here than a week of reading, because five of our eight recent stems ask for exactly that kind of figure.
Put the hours where the marks are. Four questions is 4% of the paper. The Constitution is priced at 10 on the same table and has averaged 13.8 across the newest five papers. If your labour notes are thicker than your constitutional law notes, the timetable is upside down.
Know that both generations are live. The 2020 Code has been asked. The 1947 Act has been asked more recently than that. Do not drop either on the assumption that the new one has replaced the old one in the exam hall.
What to skip: depth anywhere in this subject. There is no statute here that repays close study, because no single statute has produced more than two of our eight recent questions. Breadth at a shallow level beats depth in one Act.
Also skip the old papers as a guide to this row. The seven oldest average 5.1 and include a paper with 7. You would be preparing for a slightly bigger subject than the one you are sitting, and taking the hours from somewhere that needs them more.
Does this subject earn space in your bag
No. That is our judgement, not a Bar Council instruction, and here is the reasoning.
The case for a Bare Act is strongest when a lot of marks turn on text you can find. Here the marks are few and the text is scattered. To cover the eight questions we read you would carry the Industrial Relations Code, the Payment of Gratuity Act, the Industrial Disputes Act, the Maternity Benefit Act, the Factories Act and the trade union law, for an expected 3.8 marks. That is most of a bag, while the Civil Procedure Code alone is worth 10 and the Constitution has been running near 14.
The Bar Council has published nothing about how many Bare Acts a candidate may bring, so the limit in practice is what you can carry and fit on a desk. The constraint is real even though no rule states it.
What we would do instead. Learn the thresholds rather than carrying six books, and answer every labour question even when you are unsure. The AIBE XXI question booklet states it plainly: "There is no negative marking." Four questions you guess are four chances. Four you leave blank are four certainties.
If you do carry anything here, one rule about the copy. 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 a stated risk, not just using it. Combined labour law volumes are usually sold with commentary and notes, which is the kind of book that clause describes. 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, and for a row that names no statute, deciding what counts as labour law is our judgement more than anywhere else. We put a question where the statute named in its stem points. One of our eight stems, the trade union one, names no statute at all, so that one is a call we made by reading 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.
- Eight stems is a sample. The list of six laws, and every pattern above, rests on eight questions out of 84.
- We do not say what any provision contains. We know which statutes the papers name and what they ask for. The thresholds themselves are in the Acts, not in our count.
- Counts are not difficulty. Four questions over six statutes is harder to prepare than four from one.
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, and the line about negative marking is printed on the first page of the AIBE XXI question booklet, Set A, for the exam of 7 June 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, including their spacing: AIBE XXI question 97, sat 7 June 2026, AIBE XVIII question 78, and AIBE XX question 100, sat 30 November 2025. The other stems referred to are AIBE XIX question 78, AIBE XVIII questions 76, 77 and 79, and AIBE XVII question 22. 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 closes on 27 October 2026.
Spend one evening on this subject and no more. Make a single page of printed thresholds from the Acts named above, read it twice, and let the rest go. Then take those hours to the Constitution and the Civil Procedure Code, which are worth five times as much between them on the Bar Council's own table.
Then find out whether that was the right call by sitting a real paper. 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. When you finish, find the labour questions in it. There should be about four, and if you dropped most of them, you know where that evening goes. Lifetime access to all 19 is Rs 499, paid once.