Assistant Provident Fund Commissioner and Enforcement Officer / Accounts Officer (APFC and EO/AO) 2025 recruitment test. Transcribed from the Commission's own booklet (series A, PENA-A-PTS); answer worked out by our faculty — UPSC has published no answer key for this sitting. This question is in Part B. Answer last reviewed 25 August 2026.

Consider the following statements in reference to the Payment of Wages Act, 1936 : 1. Wages may be paid in current coins. 2. Wage period can be fixed for weekly payment. 3. Wages are to be paid before the expiry of the seventh day after the last day of the wage period in establishments employing more than 1000 persons. Which of the statements given above is/are correct ?

(a)1 and 2 only
(b)1 only
(c)2 only
(d)1, 2 and 3

Answer

Why

Correct — A, (a) 1 and 2 only. Each numbered statement has to be decided on its own section of the Payment of Wages Act, 1936, and two of the three survive.

Statement 1 — 'Wages may be paid in current coins.' CORRECT. Section 6, headed 'Wages to be paid in current coin or currency notes', provides that all wages shall be paid in current coin or currency notes or by cheque or by crediting the wages in the bank account of the employee. Current coin is the first mode the section names, so the statement is a plain reading of it. The cheque and bank-credit routes were added later — originally they needed the employee's written authorisation, and the 2017 amendment allowed the appropriate Government to notify industrial establishments in which wages must be paid only by cheque or by bank credit — but none of that displaces coin as a permitted mode.

Statement 2 — 'Wage period can be fixed for weekly payment.' CORRECT. Section 4 requires every person responsible for the payment of wages under section 3 to fix periods, called wage-periods, in respect of which wages are payable, and provides that no wage-period shall exceed one month. The Act therefore sets only a ceiling on the length of a wage-period. Daily, weekly, fortnightly and monthly wage-periods are all lawful; only a period longer than a month is not.

Statement 3 — 'Wages are to be paid before the expiry of the seventh day after the last day of the wage period in establishments employing more than 1000 persons.' INCORRECT, and the error is a straight inversion. Section 5(1) sets two deadlines by size:

(a) where LESS THAN one thousand persons are employed in the railway, factory or industrial or other establishment — before the expiry of the SEVENTH day after the last day of the wage-period; (b) in any other such establishment, that is one employing one thousand or more — before the expiry of the TENTH day.

The larger establishment gets the longer time, because it has more wages to compute and disburse. Statement 3 attaches the seventh-day deadline to the establishment employing more than a thousand, which is the group entitled to ten days. Swap the two headcounts and the statement would be right.

Statements 1 and 2 correct, statement 3 incorrect — option (a).

Why the others are wrong

(b)1 only — This would be right only if statement 2 were also wrong, and it is not. Statement 2 says a wage-period can be fixed for weekly payment, and section 4 permits exactly that: it obliges the person responsible for payment to fix wage-periods and imposes a single restriction, that no wage-period shall exceed one month. There is no minimum, so daily and weekly wage-periods are lawful and common — a weekly wage-period is the norm in much of the construction and seasonal-employment sector. A candidate reaches this option by assuming the Act mandates monthly payment, which it does not; it caps the period at a month and leaves anything shorter to the employer's own arrangement.
(c)2 only — This would be right only if statement 1 were wrong, and it is not. Statement 1 says wages may be paid in current coins, which is the opening limb of section 6 — 'All wages shall be paid in current coin or currency notes or by cheque or by crediting the wages in the bank account of the employee.' The likely reasoning behind this option is that payment has moved to bank transfer, so coin must no longer be allowed. It has not been prohibited. What changed is that the Payment of Wages (Amendment) Act, 2017 permitted the appropriate Government to notify industrial or other establishments in which wages shall be paid only by cheque or by crediting them to a bank account; outside such a notification the older modes, coin included, remain available.
(d)1, 2 and 3 — This requires all three statements to be correct, and statement 3 is not. Section 5(1) gives the SEVENTH day to establishments employing less than one thousand persons and the TENTH day to all others, so the seventh-day deadline belongs to the smaller establishment, not to the one employing more than a thousand. The reasoning is straightforward once stated: a payroll of several thousand takes longer to compute and disburse, so the statute allows the bigger employer three more days. Statement 3 has the two limbs of the sub-section exchanged. Note also the neighbouring rule the paper does not test here — section 5(2), which requires the wages of a person whose employment is terminated to be paid before the expiry of the second working day from the termination.

Concept

The Payment of Wages Act, 1936 does not fix how much a worker is paid — that is the Minimum Wages Act, 1948 — but when, in what form and after what deductions. Four sections carry the whole of that scheme. Section 3 fixes responsibility for payment on the employer, and in the case of a factory on the manager, in the case of an industrial establishment on the person named as supervisor, and in the case of a railway on the person nominated by the railway administration. Section 4 requires wage-periods to be fixed and caps them at one month, leaving daily, weekly and fortnightly periods lawful. Section 5 sets the deadlines: the seventh day after the wage-period ends for an establishment employing less than one thousand persons, the tenth day for any other, and the second working day after termination where a person's employment ends. Section 6 fixes the permitted modes — current coin, currency notes, cheque or credit to a bank account — with the 2017 amendment allowing the appropriate Government to notify establishments where only the cashless modes may be used. Sections 7 to 13 then govern deductions: section 7(1) states the principle that wages shall be paid without deductions of any kind except those authorised by the Act, section 7(2) lists the authorised heads, and section 7(3) caps total deductions at seventy-five per cent of wages where deductions for payments to co-operative societies are involved and at fifty per cent otherwise. Coverage runs on the wage ceiling notified under section 1(6), which stands at ₹ 24,000 a month.

This is a three-statement item whose whole difficulty sits in one numeral, and that is deliberate. EPFO builds statement questions on the Payment of Wages Act by taking a section that pairs two thresholds with two consequences and exchanging them, because a candidate who has read the section once will remember 'seventh day' and 'thousand persons' as neighbours without remembering which way round they go. The habit rewarded is to store a paired rule as a direction and not as a pair of words: bigger establishment, longer time. Statements 1 and 2 are there to be verified quickly against sections 6 and 4 so that the candidate's attention is free for the third.

Key facts

Payment of Wages Act, 1936, section 4 — wage-periods must be fixed and no wage-period shall exceed one month; weekly, fortnightly and daily periods are therefore permissible.
Section 5(1)(a) — in a railway, factory or industrial or other establishment employing LESS THAN one thousand persons, wages are payable before the expiry of the seventh day after the last day of the wage-period.
Section 5(1)(b) — in any other such establishment, that is one employing one thousand or more, wages are payable before the expiry of the tenth day.
Section 5(2) — where employment is terminated, wages are payable before the expiry of the second working day from the termination.
Section 6 — all wages shall be paid in current coin or currency notes or by cheque or by crediting the wages to the employee's bank account.
The Payment of Wages (Amendment) Act, 2017 allows the appropriate Government to notify establishments in which wages must be paid only by cheque or by bank credit.
Section 3 fixes responsibility for payment; section 7(1) forbids deductions except those authorised by the Act.
The wage ceiling for coverage, notified under section 1(6), is ₹ 24,000 a month.

Study next

Section 7(2) — the full list of authorised deductions, and the caps in section 7(3)Sections 8 to 13 — fines, deductions for absence, damage or loss, house-accommodation and servicesSection 15 — claims arising out of deductions or delay in payment, and the authority appointed to hear themSection 1(6) and the notified wage ceiling of ₹ 24,000The Code on Wages, 2019, which subsumes this Act along with the Minimum Wages Act, 1948, the Payment of Bonus Act, 1965 and the Equal Remuneration Act, 1976

Common traps

Reversing section 5(1). Seven days is for establishments with fewer than a thousand employees; ten days is for the larger ones.
Assuming the Act requires monthly payment. Section 4 only caps the wage-period at one month.
Assuming coin is no longer a lawful mode. Section 6 still names it first; cashless payment can be made compulsory only by notification for notified establishments.
Overlooking the separate deadline in section 5(2) for a worker whose employment is terminated — the second working day.

The Payment of Wages Act comes up in EPFO papers as a numbers question — which day, which headcount, which ceiling, how many years the registers must be preserved — and as a deductions-list question. Make a small table of section 4 (one month), section 5 (seven or ten days, two working days on termination), section 6 (modes), section 7(3) (fifty or seventy-five per cent) and section 1(6) (₹ 24,000), and most items on this Act reduce to a lookup.

Related PYQs

EPFO_EOAO_2023_Q26

An employee shall be covered under the provisions of the Payment of Wages Act, 1936, should the employee be drawing a maximum monthly wage of :

(a) Rupees fifteen thousand
(b) Rupees eighteen thousand
(c) Rupees twenty-one thousand
(d) Rupees twenty-four thousand

Answer(d) Rupees twenty-four thousand

The EO/AO 2023 item on the coverage ceiling of the same Act — the maximum monthly wage a person may draw and still be covered by the Payment of Wages Act, 1936.

EPFO_APFC_2023_Q71

Under the provisions of the Payment of Wages Act, 1936, every employer of an establishment has to maintain the registers and records regarding the wages paid and deductions made, if any, from the wages, and preserve the same from the date of last entry for a period of

(a) five years
(b) seven years
(c) two years
(d) three years

Answer(d) three years

The APFC 2023 item on how long an employer must preserve the registers of wages paid and deductions made under the Payment of Wages Act, 1936 — the record-keeping side of the same statute.

Practice

practice — not a real PYQ
Under section 5 of the Payment of Wages Act, 1936, in a factory employing 1,500 persons the wages of a wage-period must be paid before the expiry of the :
- (a)Second working day
- (b)Seventh day after the last day of the wage-period
- (c)Tenth day after the last day of the wage-period
- (d)Last day of the following month
Answer(c) Tenth day after the last day of the wage-period
practice — not a real PYQ
Under the Payment of Wages Act, 1936, the maximum length of a wage-period is :
- (a)One week
- (b)One fortnight
- (c)One month
- (d)One quarter
Answer(c) One month

Why