BLS LLB 5 Years Sem 5 Labour Laws Solved Question Papers with Answers 2017 to 2026 - Mumbai University | munotes

The first thing to establish about this paper is which body of law you are being examined on, because in this subject that has changed and the change is not tidy. The older papers, and most of the 60 mark papers, are set on four statutes: the Industrial Disputes Act, 1947, the Maharashtra Recognition of Trade Unions and Prevention of Unfair Labour Practices Act, 1971, the Industrial Employment (Standing Orders) Act, 1946, and the Employees' Compensation Act, 1923. From 2024-25 the 75 mark paper carries a new code, 67121, a new name, Labour Law and Industrial Relations I, and is set on the Industrial Relations Code, 2020 and the Code on Wages, 2019 instead.

Do not use the paper code as a guide to which law will be asked. The 2024-25 ATKT paper for 60 marks carries the old code, 75811, and is set entirely on the two new Codes, while the 2025-26 papers under the same code, written eleven months later, are set entirely on the old Acts. Two papers of the same sitting on 15 December 2025 are on different bodies of law: the 60 mark paper on the Industrial Disputes Act and the 75 mark paper on the Industrial Relations Code. If you are practising from this folder, check the first question of a paper before you rely on it.

The Maharashtra Act is examined as heavily as the central one, which is unusual and is worth planning for. Recognition of a trade union, its cancellation and re-recognition, the rights of a recognised union against the two rights an unrecognised union has, the powers of the Industrial Court and the Labour Court, the duties of the Investigating Officer, and the unfair labour practices in Schedules II, III and IV all appear again and again. The figures repeat too: fifty employees for the recognition chapter, thirty per cent membership held for six calendar months, two years before another union can displace the recognised one, ninety days to complain of an unfair labour practice, and a fine of five hundred rupees for refusing an Investigating Officer entry.

The situational section is not unpredictable. Across these sixteen papers the same small stock of problems comes round with the names changed. A driver or a bus conductor whose eyesight fails and who is then terminated, which appears four times. An Investigating Officer refused entry to the premises, three times. A welder or an oven operator who did not wear the safety gear provided and was badly burnt or killed, three times. A union activist transferred repeatedly from place to place, three times. A doctor engaged on probation by a tea estate whose case the workers' union takes up. And a conflict between an establishment's own standing orders and the model standing orders. Learn those six and you will recognise most of what you are given.

The eyesight problem is the one to get right, because it has a two-stage answer and half the candidates give only the first stage. Termination on the ground of continued ill health is excluded from the definition of retrenchment, so the retrenchment conditions do not apply and no retrenchment compensation is payable. That is Anand Bihari against the Rajasthan State Road Transport Corporation, decided in 1991 on facts almost identical to the ones the papers use. But the Supreme Court went on to hold the terminations inequitable and directed retirement benefits and either alternative employment or compensation. An answer that stops at "not retrenchment" is technically right and half marked.

Two of the situational problems are reported cases with the citation removed. The electrician who had to go repeatedly from the heating room to the cooling plant and died of pneumonia is Indian News Chronicle against Mrs Lazarus, decided in 1951, where the death was held to be injury by accident arising out of and in the course of employment. The man employed by a temple trust to sweep its floors is the boundary of the definition of industry, which excludes activity meeting wants that are merely spiritual or religious. Naming the case is worth a mark on its own.

One provision of the Employees' Compensation Act decides more of these problems than any other, and it is easy to misread. The employer's defences, that the workman was drunk, that he wilfully disobeyed a safety rule, or that he wilfully disregarded a safety device, are all confined by their opening words to an injury not resulting in death or permanent total disablement. So the welder who ignored his helmet and survived may lose; the oven operator who ignored his and died does not, and his widow recovers in full. Read those words before you answer any problem about safety equipment.

Three paper shapes run through the folder. Up to 2019-20 it was 100 marks in three hours under codes 75801 and 75701: ten short questions of 2 marks, short notes at 5, three situational problems of 6, and four long answers of 12. From 2022-23 there is code 75811, 60 marks in two hours, ending with two long answers of 12 marks. From 2024-25 there is code 67121, 75 marks in two and a half hours, ending with three long answers of 13. The 2021-22 sitting is the outlier: an online examination of twenty multiple choice questions and ten descriptive ones, with no marks and no duration printed on it anywhere.

Two things about the files themselves will save you time. The 2023-24 paper was set again, question for question, at the 2024-25 ATKT Set 2 sitting under a different form number, so solving one solves both. And the 2025-26 paper filed here as the ATKT 75:25 paper is not a 75 mark paper at all: it carries form number 01090 and is the same 60 mark paper as the regular 60:40 file of the same date. The 75 mark paper of that sitting is a different document with form number 01092.

These are model answers prepared by munotes. They are a study aid and not official University answer keys, which the University of Mumbai does not publish.