EPFO APFC 2023 General Studies · Question 71 of 120

Correct — D, (d) three years. The provision is section 13A of the Payment of Wages Act, 1936, headed Maintenance of registers and records. Sub-section (1) requires every employer to maintain such registers and records as may be prescribed, giving particulars of the persons employed by him, the work performed by them, the wages paid to them, the deductions made from their wages, the receipts given by them and such other particulars. Sub-section (2) then fixes the retention period: every register and record required to be maintained under sub-section (1) shall, for the purposes of this Act, be preserved for a period of three years after the date of the last entry made in it. Two features of the wording repay attention. The period runs from the date of the last entry, not from the end of a financial year or from the date the employee leaves, so a live register that is still being written in has not begun its three years at all. And the obligation is expressed as being for the purposes of this Act, which means it is the wage-law retention period and does not displace longer retention duties imposed by other statutes on the same employer. The figure makes sense against the rest of the Act. A worker who has suffered an unlawful deduction or a delay in payment applies to the Authority appointed under section 15, and such an application must ordinarily be made within twelve months of the deduction or of the date the wages fell due. A three-year retention period therefore comfortably outlasts the window in which a claim can be brought and leaves room for the claim to be heard and appealed while the primary evidence still exists, which is precisely what a record-keeping provision is for.

• (a)five years — Five years is not the period the Payment of Wages Act, 1936 prescribes, and the option works because longer retention periods are so familiar from other branches of law that they feel like the natural answer. Company law is the clearest contrast: the Companies Act, 2013 requires books of account and the relevant vouchers to be kept in good order for not less than eight financial years immediately preceding the financial year in question. Tax and audit obligations run to similar lengths. But wage records serve a narrower purpose than accounting records — they exist so that a specific statutory claim about a specific wage period can be tested — and the Act sets the period accordingly. The lesson is not to import a retention period from fiscal or company law into a labour statute; each Act fixes its own, and section 13A fixes three years from the date of the last entry.
• (b)seven years — Seven years appears in no provision of the Payment of Wages Act, 1936, and it is offered as the longest of the four periods on the assumption that a candidate who is unsure will treat record-keeping as an obligation that ought to be onerous. It is worth understanding why a long period would be poor drafting here. The Act is a small, procedurally simple statute aimed at employed persons drawing modest wages, applying up to a wage ceiling that the Central Government revises by notification, and it is enforced through a summary claim before an Authority rather than through litigation stretching over years. Requiring seven years of registers would impose a storage burden entirely out of proportion to the claim it is meant to support. Read the size of the duty against the size of the remedy; they are usually matched.
• (c)two years — Two years is the only option shorter than the correct one, and it is the trap for a candidate who reasons correctly about the purpose of the provision but stops one step early. The reasoning goes that records need only outlast the period in which a claim can be brought, and since an application to the Authority under section 15 is ordinarily to be made within twelve months, two years would seem to suffice. What that reasoning misses is that a claim filed at the very end of the twelve months still has to be heard, and there is a right of appeal against the Authority's order, so the registers must survive not merely the limitation period but the whole life of a proceeding begun at its close. Three years is the figure section 13A actually chooses, and the extra year is the margin for adjudication.

The Payment of Wages Act, 1936 does not fix how much a worker is paid — that is the domain of minimum wage law — but regulates when wages are paid and what may lawfully be taken out of them. Its core is a short sequence of duties. Wage periods may not exceed one month. Wages must be paid before the expiry of the seventh day after the last day of the wage period in establishments employing fewer than a thousand persons and the tenth day in larger ones, and within two working days where employment is terminated. Payment must be in current coin or currency notes, or by cheque or credit to a bank account, and the appropriate Government may notify establishments in which payment must be made only by cheque or bank credit. Only the deductions authorised by section 7 may be made, and the section caps the total of them. Fines are separately controlled, both in amount and in procedure. Section 13A then supports the whole scheme by requiring the registers and records that make it auditable, preserved for three years after the last entry. Enforcement runs through the Authority appointed under section 15, to whom an employed person, a trade union official or an inspector may apply within twelve months, with power to order the deducted or delayed amount to be paid together with compensation. The Act applies up to a wage ceiling revised by notification, and it has been subsumed, with the Minimum Wages Act, 1948, the Payment of Bonus Act, 1965 and the Equal Remuneration Act, 1976, into the Code on Wages, 2019.

For an Assistant Provident Fund Commissioner this is not an academic provision. Almost every social security determination — whether an establishment is covered, what an employee's wages were, whether a deduction was made and remitted — is proved or disproved from the employer's own registers, and a statute that tells the employer how long to keep them is what makes an inspection possible years after the event. That is why the paper prefers record-keeping and time-limit provisions in this block: they are the provisions the officer will actually use. The habit the question rewards is holding the number together with the section and with the point from which the period runs. A candidate who remembers only three years has two thirds of the answer; a candidate who remembers section 13A, three years, and from the date of the last entry can apply it. The last element is the one most often lost, and it changes outcomes, because a register still in use has no expired retention period at all no matter how old its earliest entries are. Note also what the option set does not contain: no option offers a period tied to the employee's departure or to the end of a financial year, so all four choices concede that the clock runs from the record itself, and the question reduces cleanly to the number.

• Section 13A of the Payment of Wages Act, 1936 requires every employer to maintain prescribed registers and records of the persons employed, the work performed, the wages paid, the deductions made and the receipts given.
• Section 13A(2) requires every such register and record to be preserved for three years after the date of the last entry made in it, so the period runs from the record's own last entry and not from the end of a financial year or from the employee's departure.
• Wages must be paid before the expiry of the seventh day after the last day of the wage period in establishments employing fewer than a thousand persons, and the tenth day where a thousand or more are employed; on termination of employment, before the expiry of the second working day.
• A wage period under the Act may not exceed one month, and only the deductions authorised by section 7 may be made from wages, subject to the ceilings that section imposes on the total of them.
• An application to the Authority under section 15 for a wrongful deduction or delayed payment must ordinarily be made within twelve months, which is the claim window the three-year retention period is designed to outlast.
• The Payment of Wages Act, 1936 has been subsumed, along with the Minimum Wages Act, 1948, the Payment of Bonus Act, 1965 and the Equal Remuneration Act, 1976, into the Code on Wages, 2019.

• Importing a retention period from company or tax law; the Companies Act, 2013 requires books of account to be kept for not less than eight financial years, but section 13A of the Payment of Wages Act fixes three years
• Forgetting that the three years run from the date of the last entry in the register, so that a register still in use has not begun its retention period at all
• Reasoning that records need only outlast the twelve-month claim window and settling on a shorter period; the registers must survive the hearing and any appeal of a claim filed at the close of that window
• Confusing the retention period with the limitation period; twelve months is the time to bring a claim under section 15, and three years is the time to keep the record
• Assuming the duty disappears because the Act now sits inside the Code on Wages, 2019; questions in this paper are set on the parent statute and its section numbers

This paper asks the wage statutes as numbers attached to sections: the day by which wages must be paid, the ceiling on deductions, the limitation for a claim, the retention period for registers, the wage limit up to which the Act applies. Four numbers of the same kind are offered, so nothing can be eliminated by recognition and the answer comes only from the provision. The efficient preparation is to build a short table of every period and percentage in the Payment of Wages Act, 1936 and the Minimum Wages Act, 1948, each with its section, and to note the event each period runs from, because the setter can turn one provision into two different questions by changing the starting point. Where recall fails, reason from function: retention periods are set to outlast the claims they support, payment deadlines are set short, and limitation periods are set to a year in this family of statutes.

No directly related past PYQ was found.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  Under the Payment of Wages Act, 1936, an application to the Authority in respect of a deduction from wages or a delay in payment must ordinarily be made within

  • (a)thirty days
  • (b)six months
  • (c)twelve months
  • (d)three years

  Answer(c) twelve months — an application under section 15 must ordinarily be made within twelve months from the date of the deduction or from the date on which the payment of wages was due, though the Authority may admit a later application if the applicant shows sufficient cause for the delay. Three years is the period for which registers and records must be preserved under section 13A, and confusing the retention period with the limitation period is the commonest error on this pair of provisions.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  Under the Payment of Wages Act, 1936, in an establishment employing less than one thousand persons, wages for a wage period must be paid before the expiry of

  • (a)the second day after the last day of the wage period
  • (b)the seventh day after the last day of the wage period
  • (c)the tenth day after the last day of the wage period
  • (d)the fifteenth day after the last day of the wage period

  Answer(b) the seventh day after the last day of the wage period — section 5 fixes the seventh day for establishments employing fewer than a thousand persons and the tenth day where a thousand or more are employed. Where the employment of a person is terminated, the wages earned must be paid before the expiry of the second working day from the day of termination, which is the shortest of the periods the section prescribes.