If you have a disability, the AIBE decides almost everything about your exam day while you are still filling the registration form. Five fields, answered once, and one of them closes a door you cannot reopen on the day.
This page sets out what the form asks, what the Bar Council has actually published about extra time and scribes, and, just as important, what it has not published yet for AIBE XXII. Everything here is date stamped for a reason.
The five fields, and when you answer them
On the personal details step of the AIBE application form, these five fields sit together, and each one is marked mandatory:
- Are you Person with Different Abilities?*
- PWD Category*
- Percentage of Disability*
- Do you want scribe*
- Mode of Examination*
"Person with Different Abilities" is the form's own wording. The Bar Council's notices use "Specially abled". The wording drifts between documents, and we are quoting each document as it stands rather than tidying it.
The timing is the thing to take away. You answer all five at registration, weeks before the exam. For AIBE XXII, registration closes on 27 October 2026, and the last date to correct anything in the form is 30 October 2026. After that date, the answers you gave are the answers that stand, and the exam is on 29 November 2026.
The upload that goes with it
The form asks for a Disability Certificate among its seven required documents. Those document uploads must be .Jpeg, .Jpg or .pdf, and no file may be larger than 600KB. The full list and the specifications are in our page on the AIBE upload specifications. Get the certificate scanned and under the size limit before you start, because this form is not a good place to be improvising.
The 19 categories the form offers
The PWD Category field is a fixed list. These are the 19 options, with the abbreviations the form prints beside them:
| Category | Code |
|---|---|
| Blind | B |
| Low Vision | LV |
| Deaf | D |
| Hard of Hearing | HH |
| One Arm | OA |
| One Leg | OL |
| Both Arms | BA |
| Both Leg | BL |
| One Arm and One Leg | OAOL |
| Acid Attack Victims | AAV |
| Dwarfism | Dw |
| Cerebral Palsy | CP |
| Leprosy Cured | LC |
| Autism Spectrum Disorder | ASD |
| Intellectual Disability | ID |
| Mental Illness | MI |
| Locomotive Disability | LD |
| Speech and Language Disability | SLD |
| Blood Disorder | BD |
"Both Leg" and "Locomotive Disability" are the form's own spellings. We have reproduced the list exactly as it appears rather than correcting it, so that what you read here matches what you will see on screen.
"Do you want scribe", and the honest answer about scribe rules
The form asks the question. It is a mandatory field. What it does not do is tell you who is allowed to be your scribe, what that person must have studied, or what proof you bring.
Here is the part no other page will tell you. Those rules changed between AIBE XX and AIBE XXI, the exams of 30 November 2025 and 7 June 2026. And as of 23 September 2026, the examination guidelines for AIBE XXII have not been published. The exam is on 29 November 2026 and the document that will govern scribes on that day does not exist yet.
So we are not going to print a scribe qualification rule. Anything we told you today would be a rule from a previous edition, presented as though it applies to yours, when the recent history of this exam is that it moves. The rule you need is the one in the AIBE XXII guidelines when they appear.
What you can do in the meantime is practical. Answer the scribe question honestly on the form, because it is the only place the exam asks. Keep your disability certificate and your identity documents together. And watch the official exam site for the AIBE XXII examination guidelines. For AIBE XXI, that document was published on 20 February 2026, about three and a half months before the exam of 7 June 2026. If AIBE XXII follows the same shape, the guidelines arrive well before exam day, and they are the document to read the moment they do.
Screen Reader mode, and the door it closes
This is the field to think hardest about, because the form itself tells you what you are giving up. A tick box on the personal details step reads:
I hereby confirm & I understand that if I opt for Screen Reader mode, on the examination day any request for OMR based Pen/Paper test will not be considered.
In plain words: choose the screen reader, and you cannot change your mind at the centre. Say you turn up on 29 November and decide you would rather have the paper booklet and the OMR sheet everybody else is using. The form has already recorded that the request will not be considered.
That matters because the standard AIBE is very much a pen and paper exam. The AIBE XXI examination guidelines say:
All markings on the answer sheet must be with Blue/Black Ball Point Pen only. Using a pencil for marking on the answer sheet will lead to Disqualification of the exam.
So the two modes are genuinely different exams to sit. Decide which one you can actually work in before you tick anything, not on the day. If you are unsure, the thing to test is the format, not the question paper. Answer a hundred questions in the mode you are considering, and see what three hours of it feels like.
Extra time: 20 minutes per hour
The extra time rule is published, and it is one line. From clause 10 of the Examination Guidelines for AIBE XXI, published 20 February 2026:
In case of more than 40% disability, 20 minutes extra time per hour will be allowed to the candidate.
Three things sit inside that sentence.
It is a threshold, not a sliding scale: more than 40 per cent disability. The form asks you for a Percentage of Disability, and that is the number this rule reads. We have not seen a Bar Council document that spells out the link between that field and this clause in so many words. So we are telling you what each one says, and leaving the join visible.
It is stated per hour. The AIBE is a three hour paper, so 20 minutes an hour reads as an extra hour. We would rather you carried the rule as the Bar Council wrote it, because it has published the per hour figure and not a total.
And it is dated. That clause is from the AIBE XXI guidelines. The AIBE XXII guidelines are not out. We have no reason to expect this particular line to move, and we are not going to promise you it will not.
Two different 40 per cents
The number 40 turns up twice in this exam and means two unrelated things. One is the disability threshold above. The other is the qualifying percentage for some categories, which is the next section. They are not connected. Getting them confused is easy and expensive.
The passing mark, and the marks that actually passed
The Bar Council's notice of 10 February 2026 sets the standing rule:
The passing percentage for General and OBC candidates is fixed at 45% and for SC/ST and Specially abled candidates the passing percentage is fixed at 40%.
The same wording appears in the AIBE XX notice of 28 October 2025 and the AIBE XVIII notice of 6 October 2023, so this is settled.
Now the part almost every website gets wrong. Those are percentages, and the denominator moves. In the last two exams, nobody needed the nominal number.
| Exam | What happened | General / OBC | SC, ST, specially abled |
|---|---|---|---|
| The standing rule | the fixed percentages | 45% | 40% |
| AIBE XX, 30 November 2025 | 5 questions withdrawn, marked out of 95 | 43 | 38 |
| AIBE XXI, 7 June 2026 | marked out of 100, qualifying mark cut by 3 | 42 | 37 |
If you are in the 40 per cent group, the mark that actually passed was 38 in AIBE XX and 37 in AIBE XXI. Prepare for 40 out of 100 and treat anything below it as a fail, because the adjustment is decided after the exam and nobody can promise it in advance. But know that the flat number you see published everywhere has not been the operative number in either of the last two exams.
The exam day, as AIBE XXI ran it
Dated, because the AIBE XXII guidelines are not published. From the AIBE XXI Examination Guidelines of 20 February 2026 and the AIBE XXI question booklet:
- Reporting time 11:30. Entry to the centre closes at 13:15.
- 100 questions, one mark each, three hours.
- OMR answer sheet, blue or black ball point pen. Pencil is a disqualification.
- There is no negative marking. That is printed on the question booklet.
- Bare Acts without notes and comments are allowed in the hall. We cover the carry in rules, and the two Bar Council documents that disagree about them, in what you can actually carry in.
The gap between the reporting time and the close of entry is nearly two hours. If getting to an unfamiliar building takes planning, those two times are the useful numbers on this page. What we do not have is the moment the paper actually starts, so plan around 11:30 and not around the later figure.
What is not published
We would rather leave these blank than fill them:
- Who may act as a scribe for AIBE XXII. Not published. The rules moved between the last two editions.
- What the Mode of Examination field offers beyond the screen reader option, and how it behaves. The field exists and is mandatory. We are reporting that and no more.
- Whether extra time and a scribe can be combined, and what proof either needs. Not in any document we read.
- What to do when something on the portal fails. There is no published procedure. What the portal offers on its home page is a Grievance Redressal link and a help desk number, and that is all we will point at.
If you need a definite answer on any of these before you commit to an option, ask the help desk in writing and keep the reply. That is not a satisfying answer. It is the true one.
Where these facts come from
The five fields, the 19 category list and the screen reader confirmation are read off the Bar Council's own walkthrough of the application form, which its registration portal publishes as a 209 MB video at aibe.digivarsity.online/Documents/HowToApply.mp4 rather than as a written page. We read the frames on 23 September 2026. We did not create an account and typed nothing into the portal.
The extra time clause, the pen rule and the reporting times are quoted from the Examination Guidelines for AIBE XXI, listed on the official exam site on 20 February 2026. The no negative marking line is printed on the AIBE XXI question booklet, Set A, for the exam of 7 June 2026.
The 45 and 40 per cent rule is quoted from notice BCIT:D:0014/2026 of 10 February 2026. The AIBE XXII dates are from the registration portal home page, read 23 September 2026, and the Bar Council press release of 18 July 2026.
The statement that AIBE XXII guidelines are not published is ours, made on 23 September 2026 against the official exam site, which on that date still headlined AIBE XXI. We are not the Bar Council and we do not arrange scribes, extra time or any exam day facility. When the AIBE XXII guidelines appear, they override this page, and we will update it and say when.
What to do next
Three things, in order.
Answer the five fields carefully before 27 October 2026, and check them again before corrections close on 30 October. Treat the screen reader tick box as the decision it is, because the form says on its face that the exam day request will not be considered.
Watch the official exam site for the AIBE XXII examination guidelines and read the scribe and extra time clauses the day they appear. For AIBE XXI they were out about three and a half months before the exam.
Then find out what three hours in your chosen mode actually feels like, while there is still time to plan around it. There are 19 real AIBE previous year question papers on munotes in exam mode: 100 questions, a three hour timer, marked against the Bar Council's official answer keys. Lifetime access is Rs 499, paid once.