EPFO APFC 2023 General Studies · Question 26 of 120

Correct — D, (d) Three months. The provision is Section 25A of the Employees' Compensation Act, 1923, headed 'Time limit for disposal of cases relating to compensation', and it says in terms that the Commissioner shall dispose of the matter relating to compensation under the Act within a period of three months from the date of reference and shall intimate the decision in respect of it to the employee within that same period. Both limbs of the stem — disposal and intimation — are therefore covered by one figure, which is why the question can be answered from a single section. Section 25A was not in the Act as enacted; it was inserted by the amending Act of 2009, the same amendment that replaced the word 'workman' with 'employee' throughout and gave the statute its present name. That context is the reason the section exists: compensation claims were taking years before Commissioners, and a beneficial statute that pays late does not pay at all, since the money is meant to replace lost earnings for an injured worker or a dependent family. The Act attacks delay from both ends. Section 4A obliges the employer to pay compensation as soon as it falls due, and where the employer defaults for a month the Commissioner may order interest at twelve per cent a year and, if the delay is unjustified, a further penalty of up to fifty per cent of the compensation. Section 25A then binds the adjudicator to the same discipline with a three-month outer limit. A candidate who can attach the number to the section rather than merely remembering 'three months' can also answer the harder version of this question, which asks which section prescribes the limit or when the limit was introduced.

• (a)Six months — Six months is not the period prescribed anywhere in the Act for the disposal of a compensation matter by the Commissioner, and choosing it usually reflects a general impression that a quasi-judicial authority is given half a year rather than any recollection of Section 25A. It is worth noticing what the six-month figure would imply: a provision inserted in 2009 specifically to curb delay in a beneficial statute would be doing very little work if it allowed twice the time the section actually gives. The Act's own tempo — payment due at once under Section 4A, interest running after one month's default — points to a short limit, not a long one.
• (b)One year — One year is the longest option offered and the furthest from the statute. It is a plausible-looking trap for a candidate who is thinking of limitation rather than of disposal: the Act does contain a longer period, but it is the two years within which a claim for compensation must be preferred under Section 10, measured from the occurrence of the accident or, in the case of an occupational disease, from the onset of the disease. Those are different clocks — one governs how long the claimant has to come to the Commissioner, the other how long the Commissioner may take once the matter is before him — and the question asks only about the second.
• (c)Two months — Two months is the nearest miss and therefore the most dangerous option, because it is short enough to look like a reforming provision. But no two-month period appears in this part of the Act. The short periods that do appear are of a different order and belong to different sections: one month is the point after which interest begins to run against a defaulting employer under Section 4A(3), thirty days is the time allowed to an employer to furnish a statement about a fatal accident under Section 10A, and seven days is the period for reporting fatal accidents under Section 10B. None of them is the Commissioner's disposal period, which Section 25A fixes at three months.

The Employees' Compensation Act, 1923 is a no-fault statute: the employer is liable under Section 3 for personal injury caused to an employee by accident arising out of and in the course of employment, without the employee having to prove negligence, and the defences the common law gave employers were displaced by it. The liability is excluded in narrow circumstances — an injury that does not disable for more than three days, and, where the injury does not cause death or permanent total disablement, an accident directly attributable to the employee's being under the influence of drink or drugs, or to his wilful disobedience of an express safety rule or wilful removal of a safety guard. Compensation is quantified by formula rather than by damages: Section 4 fixes it as a percentage of monthly wages multiplied by a factor read against the employee's age from Schedule IV, subject to a statutory minimum, with the monthly wages themselves capped at a notified figure. The administration is by a Commissioner for Employees' Compensation, before whom claims are brought under Section 22 and by whom questions of liability and amount are settled; contracting out is void under Section 17, and an appeal lies to the High Court under Section 30. Around this core the amendments of 2009 and 2017 built a layer of timeliness and information duties: Section 25A's three-month limit on disposal, interest and penalty for late payment under Section 4A, and the employer's duty under Section 17A to inform an employee of his rights to compensation.

For an Assistant Provident Fund Commissioner the Employees' Compensation Act is not general knowledge; it is a statute the post administers alongside the provident fund and insurance legislation, and the paper tests it the way an administrator would need it — by numbers that appear in a section. That is why the labour block of this paper is full of items whose whole content is a figure: a time limit, an employee threshold, a percentage, a factor. The efficient way to prepare for them is to build a table of every number in each statute against the section that prescribes it, and then to rehearse the numbers in groups that are easy to confuse, because that is exactly how the distractors are built. Here the confusable group is the Act's periods: seven days, thirty days, one month, three months, two years, sixty days. A candidate who has that group straight answers this item in seconds and also survives the version of it that asks about the claim limitation or the appeal period instead.

• Section 25A of the Employees' Compensation Act, 1923 requires the Commissioner to dispose of a matter relating to compensation within three months of the date of reference and to intimate the decision to the employee within that same period.
• Section 25A was inserted by the amending Act of 2009, which also substituted 'employee' for 'workman' throughout and renamed the statute the Employees' Compensation Act; the object was to curb delay in a beneficial law where late payment defeats the purpose of the award.
• Section 4A requires compensation to be paid as soon as it falls due; where the employer defaults for one month the Commissioner may direct interest at twelve per cent a year, and where the delay is without justification a further penalty of up to fifty per cent of the compensation.
• A claim for compensation must be preferred within two years of the occurrence of the accident or, for an occupational disease, of the onset of the disease, under Section 10; an employer must furnish a statement about a fatal accident within thirty days under Section 10A, and fatal accidents are reportable within seven days under Section 10B.
• An appeal from an order of the Commissioner lies to the High Court under Section 30, and Section 17 makes any contract by which an employee gives up his right to compensation null and void; Section 17A, inserted in 2017, obliges the employer to inform the employee of his rights to compensation.

• Confusing the Commissioner's disposal period of three months under Section 25A with the claimant's limitation period of two years under Section 10; the two clocks run at different stages and the stem names the second one only by saying 'from the date of reference'
• Reading the question as being about payment rather than adjudication — payment obligations sit in Section 4A, with interest running after one month's default, and are a separate group of numbers
• Assuming the whole Act dates from 1923; several of the numbers examined, including this three-month limit, were inserted by the 2009 amendment, and one duty on employers was added in 2017
• Learning the figure without the section, which leaves you unable to answer the commoner variant of this item that asks which provision prescribes the limit

The labour block of the APFC paper asks statutes numerically. Expect stems of the form 'what is the time limit prescribed under', 'what is the minimum number of employees', 'what percentage of wages' and 'within what period may an appeal be preferred', each answerable from a single section, and expect the four options to be four values of the same unit so that no elimination by type is possible. Because the options give you no help, the only defence is a prepared table of numbers keyed to sections, revised as groups of confusable figures rather than statute by statute.

No directly related past PYQ was found.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  Under the Employees' Compensation Act, 1923, within what period must a claim for compensation be preferred, reckoned from the occurrence of the accident?

  • (a)Three months
  • (b)Six months
  • (c)One year
  • (d)Two years

  Answer(d) Two years — Section 10 requires that a claim for compensation be preferred within two years of the occurrence of the accident, or, in the case of an occupational disease, of the date of the onset of the disease, in addition to the requirement that notice of the accident be given as soon as practicable. The three-month figure belongs to Section 25A and binds the Commissioner's disposal of the matter, not the claimant's approach to him.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  Where an employer fails to pay compensation within one month from the date on which it fell due, the Commissioner may under the Employees' Compensation Act, 1923 direct payment of interest at the rate of

  • (a)six per cent per annum
  • (b)nine per cent per annum
  • (c)twelve per cent per annum
  • (d)eighteen per cent per annum

  Answer(c) twelve per cent per annum — Section 4A(3) allows the Commissioner to direct interest at twelve per cent a year, or at such higher rate as may be notified, on the unpaid amount where the employer has defaulted for a month, and where the delay is without justification he may impose a further sum of up to fifty per cent of the compensation by way of penalty after giving the employer an opportunity of being heard.