EPFO APFC 2023 General Studies · Question 68 of 120

Correct — C, (c) The Building and Other Construction Workers (Regulation of Employment and Conditions of Service) Act, 1996. The provision is section 5 of that Act, headed Expert committees, and it reads that the appropriate Government may constitute one or more expert committees consisting of persons specially qualified in building or other construction work, for advising that Government for making rules under the Act. The section goes on to provide that members of such a committee are to be paid the fees and allowances prescribed for attending its meetings, with a proviso that no fee or allowance is payable to a member who is an officer of Government or of a body corporate established by law. The purpose of the section is technical rather than representative, and that is the distinction the question turns on. The rules made under this Act govern safety and health on construction sites — scaffolding, lifting appliances, excavation, demolition, transport of materials, protective equipment — and they cannot sensibly be drafted by administrators alone. So the Act creates a body of persons specially qualified in construction work whose advice feeds the rule-making power, and it links that advice to the Central Government's power to frame model rules on the matters specified in section 40, to which the appropriate Government must conform so far as is practicable when it makes its own rules. That is why the phrase Expert Committee, with its emphasis on technical qualification, belongs to this statute rather than to the three others in the option set, each of which builds its consultative machinery around advisory boards representing employers, workers and government instead.

• (a)The Child and Adolescent Labour (Prohibition and Regulation) Act, 1986 — This Act does have a consultative body in section 5, but it is not called an expert committee. It is the Child Labour Technical Advisory Committee, constituted by the Central Government to advise on the addition of occupations and processes to the Schedule of the Act, and although its work is technical, the statute names it a technical advisory committee. The distinction between the two names is exactly what a question of this kind is testing. The Act itself, renamed by the amendment of 2016, prohibits the employment of children below fourteen years in all occupations except help in a family enterprise outside school hours or work as an artist in the audio-visual industry, and separately bars adolescents between fourteen and eighteen from the hazardous occupations and processes listed in its Schedule. Learn the exact title a statute gives its bodies; on a question of this shape the name is the answer.
• (b)The Contract Labour (Regulation and Abolition) Act, 1970 — The consultative machinery of this Act is representative rather than technical. Section 3 constitutes the Central Advisory Contract Labour Board and section 4 the State Advisory Contract Labour Boards, each drawn from government, employers and workers, and their function is to advise the appropriate Government on matters arising under the Act, including whether contract labour should be prohibited in a given process or establishment. The Act's other main pillars are the registration of establishments employing contract labour under section 7, the prohibition of contract labour by notification under section 10, the licensing of contractors under section 12, welfare obligations such as canteens, rest rooms, drinking water and first aid, and the principal employer's liability under section 21 to pay wages that the contractor fails to pay. Nowhere in that scheme is there an expert committee of persons technically qualified in the work.
• (d)The Inter-State Migrant Workmen (Regulation of Employment and Conditions of Service) Act, 1979 — This Act shares a title-form with the correct answer — both are Regulation of Employment and Conditions of Service Acts — and that resemblance is what makes it a good distractor. Its scheme, however, is built on registration and licensing rather than on expert advice. Establishments employing inter-State migrant workmen must be registered under section 4, contractors who recruit them must be licensed under section 8, and the contractor carries statutory duties under section 12 including the furnishing of particulars to the authorities. Its distinctive protections are financial and are tied to the fact of migration: a displacement allowance under section 14, payable at the time of recruitment and equal to at least half a month's wages, and a journey allowance under section 15 covering the fare to and from the home State with wages for the days of the journey. There is no provision for an expert committee.

Indian labour statutes build their consultative machinery in two different ways, and the difference is worth holding because it is what questions of this kind exploit. The commoner form is the tripartite advisory board, in which government, employers and workers are represented and the body advises on policy questions arising under the Act — the Central and State Advisory Contract Labour Boards of the 1970 Act are the standard example, and the same pattern appears in the advisory committees of the building workers legislation itself. The rarer form is the expert committee, whose members are chosen for technical qualification in the subject matter rather than as representatives of an interest, and whose task is to inform the drafting of rules. Section 5 of the Building and Other Construction Workers (Regulation of Employment and Conditions of Service) Act, 1996 is the clearest instance, because construction safety rules are highly technical. The Act as a whole applies to establishments employing ten or more building workers, provides for the registration of establishments and of workers as beneficiaries of State Welfare Boards, requires safety committees and safety officers in large establishments, and is funded through the companion Building and Other Construction Workers' Welfare Cess Act, 1996, which levies a cess on the cost of construction. Both the 1996 Act and the 1979 inter-State migrant workmen Act have since been subsumed into the Occupational Safety, Health and Working Conditions Code, 2020.

The labour law block of this paper is written for an officer who will administer a social security statute, so it asks the kind of question a practitioner answers by opening the bare Act: which provision sits in which enactment. The stem here puts the phrase Expert Committee inside single quotation marks, which is the setter's way of saying that the exact statutory expression is what matters, not the general idea of consulting experts. That signal is worth acting on, because all four Acts in the set consult somebody. The discriminating skill is to remember the label each statute uses — technical advisory committee in the child labour Act, advisory contract labour board in the 1970 Act, expert committee in the construction workers Act — and, failing that, to reason from subject matter: the statute whose rules are the most technical is the one likeliest to be given a technically qualified committee, and construction safety is far more technical than the regulation of contract labour or the movement of migrant workmen. Cultivating a habit of citing the section number is what turns this from a memory exercise into knowledge; a candidate who can say section 5 of the 1996 Act has something an examiner and an employer can both use.

• Section 5 of the Building and Other Construction Workers (Regulation of Employment and Conditions of Service) Act, 1996 empowers the appropriate Government to constitute one or more expert committees of persons specially qualified in building or other construction work, to advise it on making rules under the Act.
• Members of such an expert committee are paid the prescribed fees and allowances for attending meetings, except where the member is an officer of Government or of a body corporate established by law; the Central Government may frame model rules on the matters in section 40 after considering the committee's recommendation.
• Section 5 of the Child and Adolescent Labour (Prohibition and Regulation) Act, 1986 provides for a Child Labour Technical Advisory Committee to advise the Central Government on additions to the Act's Schedule — a technical body, but not one the statute calls an expert committee.
• The Contract Labour (Regulation and Abolition) Act, 1970 works through the Central and State Advisory Contract Labour Boards under sections 3 and 4, registration of establishments under section 7, prohibition by notification under section 10, licensing of contractors under section 12 and the principal employer's wage liability under section 21.
• The Inter-State Migrant Workmen (Regulation of Employment and Conditions of Service) Act, 1979 provides for registration of establishments under section 4 and licensing of contractors under section 8, and gives migrant workmen a displacement allowance under section 14 and a journey allowance under section 15.
• The 1996 Act applies to establishments employing ten or more building workers, provides for registration of workers as beneficiaries of State Welfare Boards, and is financed through the companion Building and Other Construction Workers' Welfare Cess Act, 1996; it has been subsumed, with the 1970 and 1979 Acts, into the Occupational Safety, Health and Working Conditions Code, 2020.

• Treating any consultative body as an expert committee; the child labour Act's section 5 body is a technical advisory committee and the 1970 Act's are advisory contract labour boards, and the question turns on the statutory name
• Confusing the two Acts whose titles both end in Regulation of Employment and Conditions of Service — the construction workers Act of 1996 and the inter-State migrant workmen Act of 1979
• Forgetting that the construction workers legislation comes in a pair, the principal Act of 1996 and the Welfare Cess Act of the same year that funds the State Welfare Boards
• Assuming these Acts have been repealed outright by the labour codes; the Occupational Safety, Health and Working Conditions Code, 2020 subsumes them, and questions in this paper are still set on the parent statutes
• Answering a which-Act question by subject impression alone; several labour statutes cover construction sites in some measure, and only the section heading identifies where a named provision actually sits

Labour law in this paper is asked as location and quantum: which Act contains a named provision, which schedule carries a named list, how many days or years or persons a section specifies. The option sets are always four real labour statutes with overlapping subject matter, so elimination by topic rarely works and the answer comes from remembering the architecture of each Act — what its opening chapter constitutes, what its middle chapters register or license, and what its schedules list. The most economical preparation is to build a one-line map of each major statute in this family, naming the body it creates, the officer it appoints, the register it requires and the schedules it carries. That map answers questions on the expert committee of the construction workers Act, the advisory boards of the contract labour Act and the displacement allowance of the migrant workmen Act with equal ease.

No directly related past PYQ was found.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  Under the Building and Other Construction Workers (Regulation of Employment and Conditions of Service) Act, 1996, an expert committee constituted under section 5 consists of

  • (a)equal numbers of representatives of employers, workers and Government
  • (b)persons specially qualified in building or other construction work
  • (c)Members of Parliament nominated by the presiding officers of the two Houses
  • (d)officers of the State Welfare Board and registered beneficiaries

  Answer(b) persons specially qualified in building or other construction work — section 5 constitutes the committee for the purpose of advising the appropriate Government on making rules under the Act, and its members are chosen for technical qualification rather than as representatives of an interest. Tripartite representation of employers, workers and Government is the composition of the advisory committees under the same Act and of the advisory contract labour boards under the Contract Labour Act, 1970.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  The displacement allowance and the journey allowance are protections provided under which one of the following enactments?

  • (a)The Contract Labour (Regulation and Abolition) Act, 1970
  • (b)The Payment of Wages Act, 1936
  • (c)The Inter-State Migrant Workmen (Regulation of Employment and Conditions of Service) Act, 1979
  • (d)The Building and Other Construction Workers (Regulation of Employment and Conditions of Service) Act, 1996

  Answer(c) The Inter-State Migrant Workmen (Regulation of Employment and Conditions of Service) Act, 1979 — section 14 gives the workman a displacement allowance at the time of recruitment, equal to at least half a month's wages, and section 15 a journey allowance covering the fare to and from the home State along with wages for the period of the journey. Both protections exist because the worker is recruited in one State for employment in another, which is what distinguishes this Act from the general contract labour law.