EPFO APFC 2023 General Studies · Question 98 of 120

Correct — B, (b) It is concluded on the date when it ends in failure resulting in no memorandum of settlement signed between the parties. The ask is negative — the booklet prints the 'not' in bold italics — so the answer is the one statement that misstates the law, and the other three reproduce the statute. The provision is section 20(2) of the Industrial Disputes Act, 1947, which says that a conciliation proceeding shall be deemed to have concluded in three circumstances: where a settlement is arrived at, when a memorandum of the settlement is signed by the parties to the dispute; where no settlement is arrived at, when the report of the conciliation officer is received by the appropriate Government or when the report of the Board is published under section 17, as the case may be; and, in any event, when a reference is made to a Court, Labour Court, Tribunal or National Tribunal under section 10 during the pendency of the conciliation proceedings. Option (b) takes the second of those situations and gives it the wrong terminal date. Failure of conciliation does not by itself conclude the proceeding on the day the parties stop agreeing. Where conciliation fails, the conciliation officer must send the appropriate Government a full report setting out the steps he took and the reasons why a settlement could not be reached, and the proceeding is deemed concluded only when that report is received by the appropriate Government — or, where a Board of Conciliation was handling the dispute, when the Board's report is published under section 17. So the statute fixes the date by reference to an act of the machinery, the receipt or publication of a report, and not by reference to the state of mind of the parties. Option (b) substitutes the latter for the former and is therefore the incorrect statement. Why the date is worth fixing so precisely becomes clear from what depends on it. A strike in a public utility service is prohibited during the pendency of conciliation proceedings before a conciliation officer and for seven days after their conclusion, and a strike or lock-out is prohibited during proceedings before a Board and for seven days after those conclude. If the conclusion could be dated to the moment negotiations broke down, the protected period would end at a moment neither party could prove.

• (a)It is concluded on the date when a memorandum of settlement is signed by the parties. — This statement is correct, so it cannot be the answer to a question asking which statement is not correct. It reproduces the first limb of section 20(2): where a settlement is arrived at, the conciliation proceeding is deemed to have concluded when a memorandum of the settlement is signed by the parties to the dispute. Notice that the terminal event here is again a document and not a state of agreement — the proceeding ends when the memorandum is signed, not when the parties reach an understanding. The memorandum matters in its own right as well: a settlement arrived at in the course of conciliation proceedings is binding not only on the parties to the agreement but on all the workmen employed in the establishment, present and future, under section 18, which is why the signing of it is treated as the formal end of the process. A candidate whose eye is caught by the word 'signed' and who wonders whether the date of signing is really the operative one is being tested on the same principle that decides the keyed option: the statute dates every conclusion by an identifiable act.
• (c)It is concluded on the date when the report of the Conciliation Officer is received by the Appropriate Government when no settlement is arrived. — This statement is correct and reproduces the second limb of section 20(2) accurately. Where no settlement is arrived at, the proceeding is deemed to have concluded when the report of the conciliation officer is received by the appropriate Government. It is worth reading this option and the keyed one side by side, because the pair is the whole point of the question: both describe a failed conciliation, and they differ only in the event that ends it. This option names the receipt of the report by the appropriate Government, which is what the statute says; the keyed option names the failure itself, which is not. The section provides a parallel rule where the dispute was before a Board of Conciliation rather than a conciliation officer, in which case the proceeding concludes when the Board's report is published under section 17. The booklet prints this option as 'when no settlement is arrived', without the word 'at' that the sentence would ordinarily take, and it has been reproduced exactly as printed.
• (d)It is concluded on the date when the reference is made by the Appropriate Government to the Labour Court/Industrial Tribunal under Section 10 of the Act during pendency of the conciliation proceedings. — This statement is correct and reproduces the third limb of section 20(2). If, while conciliation is still pending, the appropriate Government makes a reference of the dispute to a Court, Labour Court, Tribunal or National Tribunal under section 10, the conciliation proceeding is deemed to have concluded on the date of that reference. The rule exists because the two processes cannot sensibly run at the same time: once the dispute has been sent for adjudication, conciliation has nothing left to do, and the statute closes it rather than leaving it formally alive. This limb is also the one that most often surprises candidates, because it ends a conciliation proceeding by an act of the Government that has nothing to do with whether the parties were close to agreement. Its practical significance is the same as that of the other two limbs: the periods during which strikes and lock-outs are prohibited, and during which conditions of service may not be altered, are measured from the date of conclusion.

Conciliation is the middle stage of the dispute settlement machinery under the Industrial Disputes Act, 1947, sitting between the works committee and voluntary negotiation on one side and compulsory adjudication on the other. A conciliation officer is appointed under section 4 and charged by section 12 with mediating in and promoting the settlement of industrial disputes; in a public utility service where a notice of strike or lock-out has been given under section 22, he must hold conciliation proceedings, and in other cases he may. He investigates the dispute without delay, does what he thinks fit to induce the parties to a fair and amicable settlement, and then reports. If a settlement is reached he sends a report to the appropriate Government together with a memorandum of the settlement signed by the parties; if none is reached he sends a full report setting out the steps taken and the reasons why no settlement could be arrived at, which is known in practice as a failure report, and on receiving it the Government decides whether to refer the dispute for adjudication. A Board of Conciliation under section 5 does the same work in a more formal, tripartite form, and its report is published under section 17. Section 20 fixes the boundaries of the process: a conciliation proceeding is deemed to have commenced on the date the notice of strike or lock-out is received by the conciliation officer, or on the date of the order referring the dispute to a Board, and it concludes on one of the three events already described. Those two dates matter because a great deal of the Act is timed from them. Sections 22 and 23 prohibit strikes and lock-outs during the pendency of conciliation and for a period after its conclusion, and section 33 restricts changes in the conditions of service of the workmen concerned while a proceeding is pending. The Act is one of the three statutes subsumed by the Industrial Relations Code, 2020, along with the Trade Unions Act, 1926 and the Industrial Employment (Standing Orders) Act, 1946, and the four labour Codes were brought into force on 21 November 2025; a question set on a 2023 paper is answered on the Act as it then stood.

The labour law block of this paper is at its most characteristic in an item like this one: a single sub-section is broken into its limbs, each limb is written out as an option, and one limb is altered in a single respect. The alteration is never crude. Here the false option does not invent a rule; it describes the right situation — a conciliation that has failed — and moves the date from the receipt of the report to the failure itself, which is what a reader who knows the shape of the section but not its wording would naturally assume. Answering the question therefore requires the text and not the gist, and it is a good argument for reading the operative sections of the major labour statutes in their own words rather than in a summary. There is a second reason this particular sub-section repays that treatment, and it is worth more than the mark: nearly every prohibition and protection in the Act is dated from the commencement or the conclusion of a proceeding. If the conclusion of a failed conciliation were the day the parties fell out, no employer or union could know with certainty when the ban on a strike or a lock-out lifted. Fixing it to the receipt of a written report by the Government gives everybody a date on the record. Reading a statutory provision by asking what turns on it, rather than by memorising it flat, is the habit that makes this block tractable, because the same few dates and periods are examined again and again.

• Section 20(2) of the Industrial Disputes Act, 1947 provides that a conciliation proceeding is deemed to have concluded in three cases: where a settlement is arrived at, when the memorandum of settlement is signed by the parties; where no settlement is arrived at, when the conciliation officer's report is received by the appropriate Government or the Board's report is published under section 17; and when a reference is made under section 10 during the pendency of the proceedings.
• A failed conciliation therefore does not conclude on the date of failure. It concludes when the failure report reaches the appropriate Government, which is the statement misdescribed in the keyed option of this question.
• Section 20(1) fixes the other end: a conciliation proceeding is deemed to have commenced on the date on which a notice of strike or lock-out under section 22 is received by the conciliation officer, or on the date of the order referring the dispute to a Board.
• The dates matter because the Act's prohibitions are timed from them. A strike in a public utility service is barred during the pendency of conciliation proceedings before a conciliation officer and for seven days after their conclusion, and strikes and lock-outs are barred during proceedings before a Board and for seven days after those conclude.
• Under section 12 the conciliation officer must investigate the dispute without delay, do what he thinks fit to induce a fair and amicable settlement, and then report — sending a memorandum signed by the parties where a settlement is reached, and a full report of the steps taken and the reasons for failure where it is not.
• A settlement arrived at in the course of conciliation proceedings binds not only the parties who signed it but all the workmen employed in the establishment, present and future, under section 18, which is why the signing of the memorandum is treated as the formal end of the proceeding.

• Reading past the bold-italic 'not'. Three of these four statements are accurate reproductions of the sub-section, so a candidate who marks the first statement he recognises as correct will be wrong three times out of four.
• Dating a failed conciliation from the failure. The statute dates it from the receipt of the conciliation officer's report by the appropriate Government, or from the publication of a Board's report under section 17.
• Overlooking the third limb. A reference made under section 10 during the pendency of conciliation concludes the conciliation proceeding, even though nothing has happened between the parties themselves.
• Confusing commencement with conclusion. Section 20(1) dates the commencement from the receipt of a strike or lock-out notice or the order referring the dispute to a Board, and questions sometimes swap the two halves of the section.
• Treating the difference between a conciliation officer and a Board of Conciliation as immaterial. The concluding event differs: receipt of the officer's report against publication of the Board's report under section 17.

The Industrial Disputes Act is asked in this exam in three shapes. The first is the statement-set item used here, where one sub-section is split into its limbs and one limb is altered in a single particular — a date moved, an authority changed, a period lengthened — and the ask is negative. The second is the provision-location question: which section provides for voluntary arbitration, which authority may be approached for the recovery of money due, which section bars a change in conditions of service during pendency. The third is the applied question about strikes and lock-outs, testing the notice periods in a public utility service, the periods after conclusion during which a strike remains prohibited, and what makes a strike illegal. All three reward reading the operative sections in their own words, since the difference between a correct and an incorrect option is often a single noun. A section-wise list of the numbers in this Act — fourteen days, six weeks, seven days, two months, three months — with what each attaches to, answers a large part of what the paper asks.

No directly related past PYQ was found.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  Under section 20(1) of the Industrial Disputes Act, 1947, a conciliation proceeding is deemed to have commenced on the date on which

  • (a)a notice of strike or lock-out under section 22 is received by the conciliation officer
  • (b)the industrial dispute first arises between the employer and the workmen
  • (c)the workmen serve a charter of demands on the employer
  • (d)the conciliation officer submits his report to the appropriate Government

  Answer(a) a notice of strike or lock-out under section 22 is received by the conciliation officer — that is the commencing event where a conciliation officer is seized of the dispute, the alternative in the same sub-section being the date of the order referring the dispute to a Board. The last option describes an event at the other end of the process: the receipt of that report by the appropriate Government is what concludes a failed conciliation under section 20(2).

• practice — not a real PYQ

  A strike in a public utility service is prohibited during the pendency of conciliation proceedings before a conciliation officer and for what period after the conclusion of those proceedings?

  • (a)Seven days
  • (b)Fourteen days
  • (c)Two months
  • (d)Six weeks

  Answer(a) seven days — section 22 bars a strike in a public utility service during the pendency of conciliation proceedings before a conciliation officer and for seven days after their conclusion, and section 23 applies the same seven-day tail to proceedings before a Board. Two months is the corresponding period after the conclusion of proceedings before a Labour Court or Tribunal, and fourteen days and six weeks belong to the notice requirements in section 22.