EPFO APFC 2023 General Studies · Question 99 of 120

Correct — C, (c) The Mines Act, 1952. The provision is section 9A, headed 'Facilities to be provided for occupational health survey', and it was inserted into the Act by amendment in 1983. Its scheme runs in a sequence that matches the stem almost clause for clause. The Chief Inspector or an Inspector may undertake a safety and occupational health survey in a mine after giving notice, and the owner, agent and manager must afford all the facilities the survey needs, including facilities for the medical examination of the persons employed. Every employee selected must present himself for that examination and furnish the information asked about his work and his health, and the time he spends doing so counts as duty, with overtime at ordinary rates for any time beyond his normal working hours. Sub-section (4) then provides that a person found medically unfit on that examination to discharge the duty he was discharging immediately before it is entitled to medical treatment at the cost of the owner, agent and manager, on full wages throughout the treatment. Sub-section (5) carries the consequence the question is about. If, after the treatment, he is still declared medically unfit for that duty, and the unfitness is directly ascribable to his employment in the mine, the owner, agent and manager must provide him with alternative employment in the mine for which he is medically fit. Two provisos deal with the situations in which that cannot be done. Where no such alternative employment is immediately available, he is to be paid a disability allowance at the prescribed rates; and where he decides to leave his employment in the mine, he is to be paid a lump sum by way of disability compensation at the prescribed rates. Sub-section (6) directs that those rates be determined having regard to the monthly wages of the employees, the nature of the disabilities and other related factors. The stem describes a person declared unfit after medical examination for whom no alternative employment is possible, which is precisely the case the provisos of section 9A(5) meet, and no other statute in the option set contains a provision of that shape.

• (a)The Building and Other Construction Workers (Regulation of Employment and Conditions of Service) Act, 1996 — This Act is a genuine welfare statute for a large and vulnerable workforce, but it does not contain the provision described. The Building and Other Construction Workers (Regulation of Employment and Conditions of Service) Act, 1996 regulates the employment and conditions of service of construction workers and provides for their safety, health and welfare; it works alongside a companion Act that imposes a cess on the cost of construction, and the money collected funds State welfare boards which run schemes for registered workers. Where a construction worker is injured or disabled, the compensation route is the Employees' Compensation Act, 1923 or a welfare board scheme, not a statutory duty on the employer to find alternative work and to pay a disability allowance or a lump sum when he cannot. It is worth noting that this same Act is the answer to a different question in this very paper, on the constitution of an Expert Committee, which is a reminder that these four statutes are examined against one another repeatedly and are best learnt as a set.
• (b)The Factories Act, 1948 — This is the closest of the three wrong options, and the reason it is close is instructive. The Factories Act, 1948 does deal with medical examination: it provides for certifying surgeons, who examine young persons and workers engaged in dangerous occupations and certify their fitness, and in relation to hazardous processes it requires the occupier to maintain accurate health records and to arrange for the medical examination of every worker before employment and at periodic intervals thereafter. What it does not do is attach the consequence described in the stem. There is no provision in the Factories Act obliging the occupier to find alternative employment for a worker declared unfit and, failing that, to pay him a disability allowance or a lump sum by way of disability compensation. The distinction to carry away is between a statute that requires workers to be examined and a statute that also says what must happen to a worker whom the examination declares unfit; the mines legislation does both, and the factories legislation stops at the first.
• (d)The Plantations Labour Act, 1951 — The Plantations Labour Act, 1951 is a welfare statute aimed at the living and working conditions of workers on tea, coffee, rubber and cinchona plantations, and its characteristic provisions are about amenities rather than about medical fitness for work — housing, drinking water, medical facilities, canteens, creches, recreational facilities and educational arrangements for children, together with hours of work, weekly rest, leave with wages and sickness and maternity benefits. Nothing in it corresponds to a compulsory occupational health survey with a duty to redeploy or compensate a worker found unfit. The option is in the set because it is one of the four labour statutes most often examined together and because plantation work, like mining, is physically demanding and carries its own health risks; but risk in the work is not the same thing as a statutory scheme for what happens when a medical examination goes against the worker.

Mining is the most hazardous of the regulated employments in India, and the Mines Act, 1952 reflects that in the depth of its inspection machinery and in the width of the duties it places on the owner, the agent and the manager, who are the three persons on whom the Act's obligations fall jointly. Its administration sits with the Directorate General of Mines Safety rather than with the ordinary factory inspectorate. Alongside the familiar subjects of hours, leave, employment of young persons, drinking water, sanitation and safety, the Act contains a distinct occupational health scheme, and that scheme is what section 9A carries. Occupational disease in mining is often slow and cumulative — pneumoconiosis and silicosis from dust, noise-induced hearing loss, musculoskeletal damage — so the harm shows itself not as an accident on a particular day but as a gradual loss of fitness for the work. A compensation system built only around accidents would miss it entirely. Section 9A therefore builds a chain: a survey by the inspectorate, compulsory examination with the time counted as duty, treatment at the employer's cost on full wages, redeployment to work the person can still do, and, where redeployment is not immediately possible or the person chooses to go, a disability allowance or a lump sum compensation at rates fixed with regard to wages and the nature of the disability. That chain should be kept distinct from the other two compensation systems examined in this paper. The Employees' Compensation Act, 1923 compensates for personal injury by accident arising out of and in the course of employment, and for listed occupational diseases. The Employees' State Insurance Act, 1948 pays disablement benefit as an insurance benefit, with questions of disablement determined by a Medical Board. Section 9A is neither: it is an employer's direct obligation, triggered by a finding of unfitness at a health survey rather than by an injury or an insurance claim. The Mines Act is one of the thirteen statutes subsumed by the Occupational Safety, Health and Working Conditions Code, 2020, 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.

This is the paper's most common labour law format after the numerical application: a provision is described in a sentence and four statutes are offered, and the candidate has to say which one houses it. Questions of this kind are answered not by having read every section of every Act but by knowing what each Act is characteristically about, and then asking which of those characters the described provision fits. Applied here, the reasoning is quick. The provision concerns medical examination, a finding of unfitness, redeployment and compensation — that is an occupational health scheme, and of the four statutes offered, the one governing the most hazardous employment with the most developed health machinery is the mines legislation. The construction workers' Act is about regulating employment and funding welfare through a cess; the plantations Act is about amenities and living conditions; the factories Act is the general safety statute for manufacturing. Only one of the four is built around a workforce whose characteristic injuries are slow diseases discovered at an examination. The paper reinforces the point by asking about these same four statutes repeatedly across the block, sometimes with the same option set in a different order, so the efficient preparation is a single sheet giving each Act its year, its coverage threshold, its administering authority and the two or three provisions unique to it. That sheet answers this question, the Expert Committee question elsewhere in the paper, and most of what this exam has ever asked in this area.

• Section 9A of the Mines Act, 1952, headed 'Facilities to be provided for occupational health survey' and inserted by amendment in 1983, is the provision under which a person declared medically unfit after examination, and for whom no alternative employment is possible, is compensated.
• Under section 9A(4), a person found medically unfit on examination to discharge the duty he was discharging is entitled to medical treatment at the cost of the owner, agent and manager, on full wages during the period of the treatment.
• Under section 9A(5), if after treatment he is still declared unfit and the unfitness is directly ascribable to his employment in the mine, the owner, agent and manager must provide alternative employment in the mine for which he is medically fit. The first proviso requires payment of a disability allowance where no such employment is immediately available, and the second a lump sum by way of disability compensation where he decides to leave.
• Section 9A(6) requires the rates under those provisos to be determined having regard to the monthly wages of the employees, the nature of the disabilities and other related factors, so the amounts are prescribed rather than left to negotiation.
• The time an employee spends presenting himself for examination during such a survey is counted as duty, and time beyond his normal working hours is paid as overtime at ordinary rates, which removes the incentive to avoid the examination.
• The provision should be distinguished from the two other compensation systems in this paper: the Employees' Compensation Act, 1923 compensates personal injury by accident and listed occupational diseases, and the Employees' State Insurance Act, 1948 pays disablement benefit as insurance, with disablement determined by a Medical Board.

• Choosing the Factories Act because it also provides for medical examination. It requires examination by certifying surgeons and in hazardous processes, but it does not require redeployment or the payment of a disability allowance to a worker found unfit.
• Assuming that any question about disability compensation must point to the Employees' Compensation Act or the Employees' State Insurance Act. Section 9A is an employer's direct obligation triggered by a health survey, not a claim for injury or an insurance benefit.
• Overlooking the condition that the unfitness be directly ascribable to employment in the mine. Without that link, the redeployment and compensation obligations in section 9A(5) do not arise.
• Missing the order of the obligations. Alternative employment comes first; the disability allowance applies where such employment is not immediately available, and the lump sum where the person decides to leave.
• Learning these four statutes only by their subject matter and not by the provisions unique to each. The paper sets the same four Acts as an option set more than once, which rewards knowing what only one of them contains.

The provision-location question is a standing feature of this paper's labour law block and takes two directions. In one, a provision is described and four statutes are offered, as here; in the other, a statute is named and four provisions are offered, and the candidate must say which one it contains. Both are answered from the same preparation: a sheet listing each major labour Act with its year, the employments it covers, the threshold at which it applies, the authority that administers it, and two or three provisions that appear in it and nowhere else. A third and harder variant asks for a number inside a provision — the days of notice, the months within which a claim must be disposed of, the size of the workforce at which a requirement bites — and this paper sets several of those in the same block. Where two statutes both touch a subject, as the mines and factories legislation both touch medical examination, expect the question to be decided by the consequence attached rather than by the subject itself, and read the stem for the clause that names that consequence.

No directly related past PYQ was found.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  Under section 9A of the Mines Act, 1952, where a person is declared medically unfit after treatment and the unfitness is directly ascribable to his employment in the mine, the first obligation of the owner, agent and manager is to

  • (a)provide him with alternative employment in the mine for which he is medically fit
  • (b)pay him a lump sum by way of disability compensation immediately
  • (c)terminate his services after giving the notice prescribed by the rules
  • (d)refer his case to the Employees' State Insurance Corporation for disablement benefit

  Answer(a) provide him with alternative employment in the mine for which he is medically fit — redeployment is the primary obligation, and money enters only through the provisos: a disability allowance where no such alternative employment is immediately available, and a lump sum by way of disability compensation where the person decides to leave his employment in the mine.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  Under the Mines Act, 1952, the time spent by an employee in presenting himself for medical examination during an occupational health survey is

  • (a)treated as leave without wages
  • (b)counted as duty, with overtime at ordinary rates for time beyond normal working hours
  • (c)deducted from the leave with wages standing to his credit
  • (d)counted as duty only if he is found to be medically unfit

  Answer(b) counted as duty, with overtime at ordinary rates for time beyond normal working hours — the Act treats attendance at the examination as part of the employee's work so that no worker loses pay by cooperating with a health survey, and pays overtime where the examination runs beyond his hours. The treatment that follows a finding of unfitness is separately provided for, at the employer's cost and on full wages.