The Bar Council of India publishes a table that says how many questions each subject gets in the All India Bar Examination. Constitutional law 10. Code of Civil Procedure 10. Company Law 2. It adds to 100, and if you are planning three weeks of revision, that table is what you plan against.
We counted the subject of every question in 19 real AIBE papers, 1,900 questions in all, and set our count against that table. The headline is not the one we expected to write.
The short version
- The published syllabus is broadly accurate. It is not decoration and it is not a lie.
- Across the newest five papers, 17 of the 19 subjects land within one question of the number the table promises. Four land exactly on it.
- One subject is reliably bigger than stated: Constitutional law, printed as 10, averages 13.8.
- One is reliably smaller: Public Interest Litigation, printed as 4, averages 2.6.
- None of it compares honestly until our categories are rolled up into the Bar Council's, which bundles four subjects into one row and three into another.
- The row that looks worst, Contract, is an artefact of age. Across all 19 papers it runs at 11.7. Across the newest five it is 7.8, within a fifth of a question of the stated number.
How we counted 1,900 questions
Our paper set runs from AIBE III, sat in 2012, to AIBE XXI, sat on 7 June 2026. Nineteen papers, 100 questions each: 1,900 questions.
An AIBE question does not come with a subject on it. The Bar Council publishes the papers and the answer keys, and neither says which of the 19 subjects a question belongs to. So there is no shortcut: somebody has to read 1,900 questions and decide. The classification below is ours, not the Bar Council's.
1,675 were assigned by pattern. The other 225 were read one at a time and assigned by hand, with the reason recorded beside each: legal maxims, bare fact patterns and one line prompts, the questions a lawyer places instantly and no pattern ever will.
The three rules that fixed the count
The first pattern pass got 57% right, not good enough to publish. Three rules took it to 88.2%, each earned by a failure rather than guessed at.
- A named statute wins. If a question names an Act, only subjects tied to an Act are considered. Before that rule, one question was filed under Company Law: "The Bharatiya Sakshya Adhiniyam, 2023 is not applicable in which case?" Loose words scattered through its five options had outvoted the Act named in its first six.
- The stem decides and the options only hint. Options carry four tenths of the weight of the question itself.
- The papers spell it both ways. "Bharatiya" and "Bhartiya" both appear in real AIBE papers, and AIBE XIX uses the short form throughout. Until the patterns allowed for both, an entire paper was invisible to the three new criminal codes.
Checked against somebody else's hand
A classifier that marks its own homework proves nothing, so we set the finished count against an independent classification of all 100 AIBE XXI questions, made outside munotes.
97 of the 100 agree. Of the three that do not, one we are confident we have right: the question opens "Under the Guardians and Wards Act, 1890", which makes it Family Law, and the other classification filed it under Labour and Industrial Laws. The other two sit on a real boundary between Public Interest Litigation and Constitution of India, and both calls are defensible.
That classification is a coaching product. We used it as a private yardstick, and every number below is still our own count of our own papers.
The rollup, and why it has to happen first
This is the step that decides whether the comparison means anything, and it is the step that gets skipped.
Our categories are finer than the Bar Council's, which has no row for the Negotiable Instruments Act or the Motor Vehicles Act. It has two bundled rows instead. Row 15 is "Law of Tort, including Motor Vehicle Act and Consumer Protection Law", worth 5. Row 17 is "Law of Contract, Specific Relief, Property Laws, Negotiable Instrument Act", worth 8.
Setting our Tort count against a row that also holds motor accident claims and consumer law gives a number that is wrong in a way nobody can see. So our buckets were added up first. That working, across all 19 papers:
| Bar Council row | Our categories inside it | Questions | Per paper | Row says |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Tort, Motor Vehicles, Consumer | Tort 45, Motor Vehicles 21, Consumer 30 | 96 | 5.1 | 5 |
| Contract, Specific Relief, Property, Negotiable Instruments | Contract 111, Specific Relief 33, Transfer of Property 44, Negotiable Instruments 34 | 222 | 11.7 | 8 |
Two notes on the table below. "Administration Law" and "Negotiable Instrument Act" are the Bar Council's own spellings, reproduced rather than tidied. The paired labels, CrPC / BNSS, IPC / BNS and Evidence / BSA, follow its rows, which name each old statute and its replacement together.
The full comparison, subject by subject
"All 19 papers" is our total for that subject divided by 19. "Newest five" is the average across AIBE XVII to XXI only, which is the exam somebody sitting AIBE XXII is preparing for. The last column is the newest five against what the syllabus says.
| Bar Council subject | Says | All 19 papers | Newest five | Gap |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Constitutional law | 10 | 12.8 | 13.8 | +3.8 |
| CrPC / BNSS | 10 | 9.5 | 9.4 | -0.6 |
| CPC | 10 | 9.6 | 10.2 | +0.2 |
| IPC / BNS | 8 | 8.1 | 8.4 | +0.4 |
| Evidence / BSA | 8 | 7.2 | 8.2 | +0.2 |
| Family Law | 8 | 6.4 | 7.0 | -1.0 |
| Contract, Specific Relief, Property, Negotiable Instrument Act | 8 | 11.7 | 7.8 | -0.2 |
| Tort, including Motor Vehicle Act and Consumer Protection | 5 | 5.1 | 4.6 | -0.4 |
| Alternative Dispute Redressal including Arbitration | 4 | 3.8 | 3.6 | -0.4 |
| Public Interest Litigation | 4 | 1.5 | 2.6 | -1.4 |
| Professional Ethics | 4 | 3.4 | 4.0 | 0.0 |
| Labour and Industrial Law | 4 | 4.4 | 3.8 | -0.2 |
| Taxation | 4 | 2.4 | 3.8 | -0.2 |
| Administration Law | 3 | 2.1 | 2.4 | -0.6 |
| Company Law | 2 | 3.2 | 2.2 | +0.2 |
| Environmental Law | 2 | 1.7 | 1.4 | -0.6 |
| Cyber Law | 2 | 1.8 | 2.0 | 0.0 |
| Land Acquisition | 2 | 1.2 | 2.0 | 0.0 |
| Intellectual Property Laws | 2 | 1.4 | 2.0 | 0.0 |
Read the last column first. Sixteen of the nineteen subjects sit within six tenths of a question of the published figure. Seventeen sit within one question. Four land on the number exactly: Professional Ethics at 4.0, Cyber Law at 2.0, Land Acquisition at 2.0 and Intellectual Property at 2.0.
That is the finding. A published syllabus that survives a count of 1,900 real questions is not what anyone expects, and we would have published the opposite as readily.
For anyone adding the columns up: the "all 19 papers" column comes to 97.3, not 100. Those missing 2.7 questions a paper are real: 51 questions across the 19 papers fall into categories the Bar Council does not list at all, and 51 divided by 19 is 2.7. The "newest five" column comes to 99.4, which is only rounding, nineteen numbers each cut to one decimal place.
The two rows that move
Constitutional law: stated 10, actually 13.8
This is the exception worth changing your plan for. Across the newest five papers, Constitutional law averages 13.8 questions against a stated 10. That is close to four extra questions, in every paper, reliably.
It is not a one paper spike. Split the set by age: Constitution shows 73 questions in the oldest seven papers, 10.4% of those 700, and 69 in the newest five, 13.8% of those 500. The share is rising.
Budget by the published table and you give 10% of your time to a 14% subject that was already the biggest on the paper.
Public Interest Litigation: stated 4, actually 2.6
The other direction, and a smaller effect. PIL is printed as 4 and averages 2.6 across the newest five. Across all 19 papers it is thinner still, 1.5 a paper.
Now the honest part, which is why we set out the outside check earlier. Two of the three disagreements were exactly this boundary: that classification called two AIBE XXI questions Public Interest Litigation and we called them Constitution of India. Both readings are defensible. Both also run in the direction that would shrink the two gaps at once, because a question moved out of Constitution is a question moved into PIL.
So how much could it explain? Two questions in one paper, spread over five, is four tenths of a question. At that rate Constitutional law would land near 13.4 and PIL near 3.0, and Constitution would still be more than three questions over its stated weight. The finding does not depend on where that line is drawn, which is why we tell you where we drew it.
The Contract row is an artefact of age
Look at the Contract group again. Across all 19 papers it runs at 11.7 against a stated 8, the worst looking number in the table. Across the newest five it is 7.8, close enough to call it honest.
Nothing there is wrong with the Bar Council's table. What is wrong is averaging 2012 papers and 2026 papers together and calling the result "the AIBE". Take the arithmetic one step further: if all nineteen average 11.7 and the newest five average 7.8, the fourteen older papers must be carrying roughly 13 contract family questions each. The old paper asked far more contract, specific relief, property and negotiable instruments than the current one does. That is why those are two separate columns, and why the newest five is the one to use.
What this changes about your revision
Five subjects carry exactly half the current paper: Constitutional law 13.8, CPC 10.2, CrPC and the BNSS 9.4, IPC and the BNS 8.4, Evidence and the BSA 8.2. That is 50.0 questions of 100 across the newest five. Add the Contract group at 7.8 and Family Law at 7.2 and seven subjects account for 65.
Set that against what actually passed. In AIBE XX, sat 30 November 2025, five questions were withdrawn, the paper was marked out of 95, and General and OBC candidates needed 43. In AIBE XXI, sat 7 June 2026, it was 42 out of 100. You do not need nineteen strong subjects. You need seven, and no blanks in the rest.
At the other end, six subjects are worth about 12 questions between them: Administration Law 2.4, Company Law 2.2, Intellectual Property 2.0, Land Acquisition 2.0, Cyber Law 2.0, Environmental Law 1.4. All six together come to less than Constitutional law alone. Worth reading, since twelve questions is a quarter of a pass and no guess is punished. Not worth a week each.
What this count cannot tell you
- The classification is ours. No official subject tag exists for any AIBE question, and another careful reader would produce a slightly different table, as the outside check showed on three questions in a hundred.
- The boundaries are real. Constitution against Public Interest Litigation is the softest edge in the set, and it sits on the two rows that move most.
- One set code per edition. Recent AIBEs run four sets, A to D, and we hold one code per edition. Whether the codes are the same questions reordered or different questions, we have not measured and will not assume.
- The old papers were set under older syllabi. Comparing a 2012 paper with a 2026 syllabus is comparing across changes nobody has documented for us. Hence the newest five column.
Where these facts come from
The syllabus is the Bar Council's own, published as Syllabus for All India Bar Exam-XXI on 2 March 2026. It is identical, row for row, to the AIBE XX syllabus of 27 September 2025: a settled table across two editions, not one year's decision. As at 23 September 2026 the Bar Council had not published its AIBE XXII examination guidelines.
The qualifying marks, 43 out of 95 for AIBE XX and 42 out of 100 for AIBE XXI, are from the Bar Council's result press releases of 7 January 2026 and 18 July 2026. The standing percentages, 45% for General and OBC candidates and 40% for SC, ST and specially abled candidates, are from its schedule notice of 10 February 2026. The percentage and the mark are not the same thing.
The subject counts are ours, from classifying all 1,900 questions in the 19 AIBE papers we hold, completed on 23 September 2026: 1,675 by pattern, 225 by hand. We are not the Bar Council, these are not its numbers, and we have rounded nothing up.
What to do next
The next exam is AIBE XXII on 29 November 2026, and registration closes on 27 October 2026.
Change two things today. Give Constitutional law the time a 14 question subject deserves, not a 10 question one. And stop revising the old contract heavy shape of this paper, because the newest five do not have it.
Then check the table against a real paper yourself, which is the only way any of this becomes yours. All 19 AIBE previous year question papers are on munotes as timed practice: 100 questions, a three hour timer, marked against the Bar Council's own official answer keys. Lifetime access to the full set is Rs 499, paid once.