EPFO APFC 2023 General Studies · Question 100 of 120

Correct — D, (d) Article 24. The Article is short enough to be worth carrying in its own words: 'No child below the age of fourteen years shall be employed to work in any factory or mine or engaged in any other hazardous employment.' The stem is close to a paraphrase of that sentence, and the three nouns it uses — factory, mine, hazardous employment — are the three the Article itself uses, which makes the identification safe once the text is known. Three features of the provision are worth holding alongside the number. First, it is a Fundamental Right in Part III, grouped with Article 23 under the heading of the Right against Exploitation, so it is enforceable through the writ jurisdiction of the Supreme Court under Article 32 and of the High Courts under Article 226. Second, it operates against private persons and not only against the State. Most Fundamental Rights restrain the State; this one, like the prohibition of traffic in human beings and forced labour in Article 23, is addressed to everybody, which is what makes it usable against a factory owner or a contractor. Third, it is a prohibition without exception on its face: it names no permitted categories and creates no power to relax the bar for particular industries, and the age of fourteen is written into the constitutional text rather than left to legislation. The Article does not stand alone. The Directive Principles ask the State to ensure that the tender age of children is not abused and that children are given opportunities to develop in a healthy manner in conditions of freedom and dignity, and Article 21A, inserted by the eighty-sixth amendment in 2002, makes free and compulsory education a Fundamental Right for children between six and fourteen — the same upper age, which is not a coincidence, since a child kept out of hazardous work has to have somewhere else to be. The statutory machinery follows the same line, principally through the child and adolescent labour legislation of 1986 as amended in 2016 and the education legislation of 2009.

• (a)Article 19 — Article 19 guarantees the six freedoms — speech and expression, assembly, association, movement, residence, and profession, occupation, trade or business — each subject to reasonable restrictions on grounds set out in the Article itself, and each available to citizens only. It has nothing to say about the employment of children. The confusion, where it happens, comes through the freedom to practise any profession or to carry on any occupation, trade or business, which is a right of the employer rather than of the child, and which in any event yields to reasonable restrictions in the interests of the general public. It is worth noting that clause (f) of Article 19(1), on the right to acquire, hold and dispose of property, was omitted by the forty-fourth amendment, so the lettering of the clauses skips from (e) to (g), a detail this exam has asked about directly.
• (b)Article 21 — Article 21 protects life and personal liberty: no person shall be deprived of his life or personal liberty except according to procedure established by law. It is the widest of the Fundamental Rights in its judicial development, and a candidate who reasons that child labour must offend the right to life is not wrong about the substance — but the question asks which Article prohibits the employment of children in a factory or mine, and the Constitution contains an Article that does so expressly. Where a specific provision exists, it is the answer to a specific question. What is worth attaching to Article 21 here is its neighbour: Article 21A, inserted by the eighty-sixth amendment in 2002, makes free and compulsory education a Fundamental Right for all children between six and fourteen. That is the positive counterpart of the prohibition in Article 24, and the two share their upper age limit.
• (c)Article 23 — Article 23 is the other half of the Right against Exploitation and is the option closest to the answer, which is why it is in the set. It prohibits traffic in human beings, begar and other similar forms of forced labour, and makes contravention an offence punishable in accordance with law, while allowing the State to impose compulsory service for public purposes provided it does not discriminate on grounds only of religion, race, caste or class. It is the constitutional foundation of the abolition of bonded labour. The two Articles are read together, they sit under the same sub-heading, and both bind private persons as well as the State; they differ in their subject. Article 23 is about the conditions of the labour — that it is forced, unfree or trafficked — and applies whatever the worker's age, while Article 24 is about the age of the worker and applies whether or not the employment is voluntary and paid.

Articles 23 and 24 together form the Right against Exploitation in Part III of the Constitution, and they are unusual among Fundamental Rights in being enforceable against private persons as well as against the State. Article 23 prohibits traffic in human beings, begar and other similar forms of forced labour, making a contravention an offence punishable in accordance with law, while permitting the State to require compulsory service for public purposes so long as it does not discriminate on grounds only of religion, race, caste or class. Article 24 prohibits the employment of any child below fourteen in a factory or a mine or in any other hazardous employment. Around these two rights sits a wider constitutional scheme for children. The Directive Principles direct the State to ensure that the health and strength of workers and the tender age of children are not abused, that citizens are not forced by economic necessity into work unsuited to their age or strength, and that children are given opportunities and facilities to develop in a healthy manner in conditions of freedom and dignity. The eighty-sixth amendment of 2002 added the positive right: Article 21A guarantees free and compulsory education to all children of six to fourteen, recast Article 45 as a directive on early childhood care and education for children below six, and added a fundamental duty on a parent or guardian to provide opportunities for education to a child between six and fourteen. The statutory machinery under these provisions is the child labour legislation of 1986, which after the amendment of 2016 is called the Child and Adolescent Labour (Prohibition and Regulation) Act — it prohibits the employment of a child below fourteen in all occupations and processes, subject to narrow exceptions for helping in a family enterprise outside school hours and for the audio-visual entertainment industry under conditions, and separately bars adolescents between fourteen and eighteen from hazardous occupations and processes — together with the education legislation of 2009. Judicial enforcement has been active as well: in the well-known child labour litigation concerning the match works of Sivakasi, decided in 1996, the Supreme Court laid down directions including the creation of a rehabilitation and welfare fund to which an offending employer must contribute for each child employed.

Constitutional provisions relating to labour recur throughout this paper's labour block, and they are asked in the simplest possible way: an Article number against a description, with four numbers offered. The item is therefore pure recall, and the marks go to whoever has learnt the small set of Articles that this exam actually uses rather than to whoever has read Part III most widely. That set is short and worth listing exactly: Article 14 on equality before the law, Articles 15 and 16 on discrimination and on equality of opportunity in public employment, Article 19(1)(g) on the freedom to practise a profession or carry on a trade, Article 21 and Article 21A, Articles 23 and 24 as the Right against Exploitation, and, among the Directive Principles, Articles 38, 39, 41, 42, 43, 43A and 47. The distractors in this question are drawn from precisely that set, which is characteristic: the wrong options are not random Articles but the ones nearest in subject, so a candidate who knows that the answer is somewhere in the twenties still has to know which. The neighbouring item in this paper asks which kind of wage Article 43 directs the State to secure, and the two together are a fair sample of how this block treats the Constitution — never conceptually, always by number. The efficient preparation is to write the number and a five-word description of each of those Articles on a single sheet and to revise it as a list, because the question format gives no context from which the number could be reconstructed.

• Article 24 provides that no child below the age of fourteen years shall be employed to work in any factory or mine or engaged in any other hazardous employment. The age of fourteen is written into the constitutional text itself and the prohibition carries no exception on its face.
• Articles 23 and 24 together make up the Right against Exploitation in Part III, and both are enforceable against private persons as well as against the State, which distinguishes them from most other Fundamental Rights. Enforcement is through Article 32 in the Supreme Court and Article 226 in the High Courts.
• Article 23 prohibits traffic in human beings, begar and other similar forms of forced labour and makes contravention an offence, while permitting compulsory service for public purposes without discrimination on grounds only of religion, race, caste or class. It is the constitutional basis for the abolition of bonded labour.
• Article 21A, inserted by the eighty-sixth amendment in 2002, guarantees free and compulsory education to all children between six and fourteen. Its upper age matches that of Article 24 by design, since the prohibition on hazardous work and the guarantee of schooling are two halves of the same policy.
• The Directive Principles support the same objective: the State is to ensure that the tender age of children is not abused, that citizens are not forced by economic necessity into work unsuited to their age or strength, and that children are given opportunities to develop in a healthy manner in conditions of freedom and dignity.
• The principal statute is the child labour legislation of 1986, renamed by the amendment of 2016 as the Child and Adolescent Labour (Prohibition and Regulation) Act. It bars the employment of a child below fourteen in all occupations and processes, subject to narrow exceptions, and bars adolescents of fourteen to eighteen from hazardous occupations and processes.

• Choosing Article 23 because both Articles concern exploitation and sit under the same sub-heading. Article 23 is about the character of the labour, whether it is forced or trafficked; Article 24 is about the age of the worker.
• Reasoning from the general to the specific and settling on Article 21. Child labour does offend the right to life in its wider development, but the Constitution contains an express prohibition and an express provision answers an express question.
• Confusing the age limits. Article 24 uses fourteen for hazardous work, Article 21A uses six to fourteen for education, and the statute uses fourteen to eighteen for adolescents in hazardous occupations.
• Assuming the prohibition binds only the State. Articles 23 and 24 are among the few Fundamental Rights available against private persons, which is what makes them usable against an employer.
• Attributing the ban to a Directive Principle. The Directive Principles on the tender age of children reinforce Article 24 but are not enforceable in a court, whereas Article 24 is.

Constitutional provisions are asked in this paper in three ways, all short. The first is the number-to-description match set here, in which four Article numbers are offered against a described provision. The second reverses it, naming an Article and asking what it contains, of which the item on Article 43 and the kind of wage it directs the State to secure is an example in this same paper. The third asks a classification: whether a named right is a Fundamental Right, a Directive Principle, a statutory right or a common law right, and against whom it can be enforced. All three are answered from one sheet listing the labour-related Articles with a short description and a note of whether the provision is enforceable and against whom. Expect the wrong options to be the Articles nearest in subject rather than random numbers, expect at least one option that is right about the subject but wrong about the provision, and remember that this block rewards precise numbering far more than it rewards constitutional argument.

No directly related past PYQ was found.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  Articles 23 and 24 of the Constitution of India together constitute which one of the following Fundamental Rights?

  • (a)The Right to Equality
  • (b)The Right against Exploitation
  • (c)The Right to Freedom
  • (d)The Right to Constitutional Remedies

  Answer(b) the Right against Exploitation — Article 23 prohibits traffic in human beings, begar and other similar forms of forced labour, and Article 24 prohibits the employment of children below fourteen in a factory, a mine or any other hazardous employment. Both are enforceable against private persons as well as the State. The Right to Equality is Articles 14 to 18, the Right to Freedom Articles 19 to 22, and the Right to Constitutional Remedies Article 32.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  Article 21A of the Constitution, making free and compulsory education a Fundamental Right, was inserted by which amendment, and for which age group?

  • (a)The Forty-second Amendment, for children below six years
  • (b)The Eighty-sixth Amendment, for children between six and fourteen years
  • (c)The Forty-fourth Amendment, for children between six and eighteen years
  • (d)The Ninety-third Amendment, for children between fourteen and eighteen years

  Answer(b) the Eighty-sixth Amendment, for children between six and fourteen years — the amendment of 2002 inserted Article 21A, recast Article 45 as a directive on early childhood care and education for children below six, and added a fundamental duty on parents and guardians to provide educational opportunities to a child between six and fourteen. Its upper age matches the age in Article 24, since the two provisions address the same child from opposite directions.