Enforcement Officer / Accounts Officer (EO/AO) 2020 recruitment test, advertisement 421. Transcribed from the Commission's own booklet (series A, NMJX-U-GTA); answer as per the official UPSC final answer key. This question is in Part B. Answer last reviewed 24 August 2026.

What is the maximum number of hours in a week that an adult worker is allowed to work for ?

(a)35 hours
(b)40 hours
(c)45 hours
(d)48 hours

Answer

Why

Correct — D, (d) 48 hours. The stem does not name a statute, but 'adult worker' and a weekly hours limit point at one provision only: section 51 of the Factories Act, 1948, which says that no adult worker shall be required or allowed to work in a factory for more than forty-eight hours in any week. Two defined words carry the sentence. 'Adult' is defined in section 2(a) as a person who has completed eighteen years of age, which is what separates this limit from the four-and-a-half-hour limit that section 71 places on a child. And 'worker' is defined in section 2(l), so the limit attaches to persons employed in a manufacturing process or in work incidental to it, not to the establishment's headcount. Forty-eight is also not a free-standing number. It is what section 51 becomes when it is read with section 52, which requires a weekly holiday, and section 54, which caps the working day at nine hours: six working days of eight hours make forty-eight, and the Act's whole working-time chapter is built around that arithmetic. Section 61 then makes the employer display and file a notice of periods of work showing exactly how those hours are arranged, which is what turns the limit into something an inspecting officer can check on the floor.

Why the others are wrong

(a)35 hours — Thirty-five hours has never been an Indian statutory working week. The figure is familiar because it is the French statutory working week, and it circulates in general-knowledge material about shorter working hours; it has no counterpart in the Factories Act, 1948 or in any of the labour codes that replace it. Nothing in Indian factory law sets a weekly limit below forty-eight.
(b)40 hours — The most tempting wrong answer, because forty hours is what most people mean by a full working week — five days of eight hours, the pattern of central government offices and of much of the organised service sector. But an office working pattern is a matter of the employer's rules or of a settlement, not of the Factories Act, and the statutory ceiling for a worker in a factory has been forty-eight hours since 1948. Confusing the customary week with the statutory maximum is the single commonest error on this item.
(c)45 hours — Forty-five appears nowhere in the working-hours chapter of the Factories Act. It looks plausible only as a number between the customary forty and the statutory forty-eight, which is precisely how a distractor of this kind is manufactured. The numbers that do belong to that chapter are nine (the daily limit, section 54), ten and a half (the spread-over, section 56), five (the stretch after which a rest interval falls due, section 55), forty-eight (the weekly limit, section 51) and sixty (the weekly total including overtime that section 65(3) permits under an exemption).

Concept

Chapter VI of the Factories Act, 1948 — sections 51 to 66 — regulates the working hours of adults, and it works by stacking limits rather than by stating one rule. Section 51 caps the week at forty-eight hours. Section 54 caps the day at nine hours. Section 55 requires an interval for rest of at least half an hour so that no period of continuous work exceeds five hours. Section 56 caps the spread-over — the span from the beginning to the end of the day's work, rest intervals included — at ten and a half hours. Section 52 gives a weekly holiday, ordinarily Sunday, and section 53 gives compensatory holidays where that weekly holiday is lost under an exemption. Section 57 deals with night shifts, section 58 with overlapping shifts, and section 59 with the price of exceeding the limits: a worker who works more than nine hours in a day or more than forty-eight hours in a week is entitled to wages for the overtime at twice the ordinary rate. Sections 64 and 65 then create the escapes — exempting rules and exempting orders for urgent repairs, continuous processes, preparatory or complementary work and exceptional pressure of work — and section 65(3) fixes their outer edge, providing that the total hours of work in any week including overtime shall not exceed sixty and that overtime work shall not exceed seventy-five hours in any quarter. Section 66 restricts the hours during which women may be employed. The forty-eight-hour week is not an Indian invention: it is the standard of the International Labour Organization's very first Convention, the Hours of Work (Industry) Convention, 1919 (No. 1), which set the eight-hour day and the forty-eight-hour week for industrial undertakings.

Working hours are the part of factory law an Enforcement Officer is most likely to meet as a factual dispute rather than a legal one, because the evidence for a breach is the notice of periods of work under section 61, the register of adult workers under section 62 and the overtime entries under section 59. The paper accordingly asks the limit as a bare number. Notice what the stem leaves out: it names no statute at all, and relies on the phrase 'adult worker', which is a term of art from the Factories Act rather than ordinary English. That is a habit worth acquiring — in these blocks the defined term in the stem is often the only signpost to which Act is being tested, and the item immediately before this one in the same paper asks who an 'Adolescent' is under the same Act.

Key facts

Factories Act, 1948, section 51: no adult worker shall be required or allowed to work in a factory for more than forty-eight hours in any week.
Section 2(a) defines an 'adult' as a person who has completed eighteen years of age; section 2(b) defines an 'adolescent' and section 2(c) a 'child'.
Section 54 caps the working day at nine hours, section 55 requires a rest interval of at least half an hour after five hours of continuous work, and section 56 caps the spread-over at ten and a half hours.
Section 52 provides the weekly holiday and section 53 the compensatory holiday where it is lost.
Section 59 entitles a worker to overtime wages at twice the ordinary rate of wages for work beyond nine hours in a day or forty-eight hours in a week.
Section 65(3) sets the outer limits where an exemption applies: total hours of work in any week including overtime not more than sixty, and overtime not more than seventy-five hours in any quarter.
The eight-hour day and forty-eight-hour week come from the ILO's Hours of Work (Industry) Convention, 1919 (No. 1), the organisation's first Convention.
The Occupational Safety, Health and Working Conditions Code, 2020, which subsumes the Factories Act, 1948 among other statutes, carries the same frame forward — an eight-hour normal working day and a forty-eight-hour week.

The Act works by stacking limits, and forty-eight is where they meet

48 hours a week — section 51→‘No adult worker shall be required or allowed to work in a factory for more than forty-eight hours in any week.’ Two defined words carry the sentence: ‘adult’ is a person who has completed eighteen years of age under section 2(a), which is what separates this limit from the four-and-a-half-hour limit section 71 places on a child; and ‘worker’ under section 2(l) attaches the limit to persons employed in a manufacturing process or in work incidental to it.

Why forty-eight is not a free-standing number→Read section 51 together with section 52, which requires a weekly holiday, and section 54, which caps the working day at nine hours: six working days of eight hours make forty-eight, and the whole working-time chapter is built around that arithmetic. Section 61 then makes the employer display and file a notice of periods of work showing how the hours are arranged, which is what turns the limit into something an inspecting officer can check on the floor.

40 hours — the most tempting wrong answer→Forty hours is what most people mean by a full working week: five days of eight hours, the pattern of central government offices and of much of the organised service sector. But an office working pattern is a matter of the employer’s rules or of a settlement, not of the Factories Act, and the statutory ceiling for a worker in a factory has been forty-eight hours since 1948.

35 and 45 hours→Thirty-five has never been an Indian statutory working week; it is the French one, and it circulates in general-knowledge material about shorter working hours. Forty-five appears nowhere in the working-hours chapter, and looks plausible only as a number lying between the customary forty and the statutory forty-eight — which is precisely how a distractor of this kind is manufactured.

The rest of Chapter VI, stacked→Section 54, nine hours a day. Section 55, an interval for rest of at least half an hour so that no period of continuous work exceeds five hours. Section 56, a spread-over — the span from the beginning to the end of the day’s work, rest intervals included — of not more than ten and a half hours. Section 52, the weekly holiday, ordinarily Sunday, and section 53, compensatory holidays where it is lost. Section 59, overtime wages at TWICE the ordinary rate for work beyond nine hours in a day or forty-eight in a week.

The escapes, and their outer edge→Sections 64 and 65 create exempting rules and orders for urgent repairs, continuous processes and exceptional pressure of work — and section 65(3) fixes their outer limit: total hours in any week including overtime not more than sixty, and overtime not more than seventy-five hours in a quarter. The eight-hour day and forty-eight-hour week are not an Indian invention: they come from the ILO’s Hours of Work (Industry) Convention, 1919, the organisation’s very first.

Study next

Sections 51 to 66 of the Factories Act, 1948 as a single scheme — daily hours, rest intervals, spread-over, weekly holiday, night shifts and overtimeEmployment of young persons: sections 67 to 77, the certificate of fitness, and the four-and-a-half-hour limit for a childSection 2 definitions — factory, worker, occupier, manufacturing process, adult, adolescent, child — which supply more EPFO questions than any other part of the ActSections 64 and 65 exemptions, and what an Inspector checks when an establishment claims oneThe Occupational Safety, Health and Working Conditions Code, 2020 and the thirteen central labour laws it subsumesThe wage consequences of working time: overtime under section 59 of the Factories Act read with the overtime provisions of the Minimum Wages Act, 1948

Common traps

Answering with the customary forty-hour office week instead of the statutory forty-eight-hour factory week.
Reading forty-eight hours as a target rather than a ceiling. Section 51 is a maximum, and hours beyond it are lawful only through an exemption and only at double wages under section 59.
Forgetting the daily limit. A schedule of six eight-hour days and a schedule of five nine-and-a-half-hour days both come to forty-eight, but the second breaches section 54.
Applying the adult limit to an adolescent or a child. The Act's limits change with the definitions in section 2, and a child's working hours are governed by section 71.
Treating sixty hours as the ordinary weekly maximum. Sixty is the outer limit section 65(3) allows where an exemption has been granted, not the general rule.

Working-time limits are near-permanent residents of the EPFO labour-law blocks, and they arrive in three shapes: the bare number, as here; a definitional item about who the limit applies to, such as the 'adolescent' question earlier in this same paper; and a compliance item asking what a factory must do when it exceeds the limit, which is answered by the overtime provision in section 59. The Factories Act, 1948 is quarried across both the EO/AO and the APFC papers, and its section 2 definitions and Chapter VI hours together account for most of what is asked.

Related PYQs

EPFO_EOAO_2020_Q62Open & attempt →

Who is an ‘Adolescent’ as per the Factories Act, 1948 ?

(a) Who has completed 15 years of age but is less than 18 years
(b) Who is less than 18 years
(c) Who has completed 14 years of age but is less than 18 years
(d) Who has completed 16 years of age but is less than 18 years

Answer(a) Who has completed 15 years of age but is less than 18 years

The definitional half of the same statute, from this paper's earlier labour-law block — who counts as an 'Adolescent' under the Factories Act, 1948, and therefore which set of hour limits applies.

EPFO_EOAO_2023_Q70

Under the provisions of the Factories Act, 1948, a Safety Committee is to be constituted in a factory where :

(a) 1000 or more workers are employed
(b) Hazardous substances are used or handled
(c) Heavy machinery is utilized
(d) 500 or more workers are employed

Answer(b) Hazardous substances are used or handled

The safety half of the same Act on a later EO/AO paper — the circumstances in which a Safety Committee must be constituted in a factory.

EPFO_EOAO_2023_Q62

The First Indian Factories Act, passed in 1881, dealt primarily with :

(a) Women labour
(b) Living conditions of factory workers
(c) Child labour
(d) Textile workers

Answer(c) Child labour

Where factory regulation in India began: what the first Indian Factories Act of 1881 was principally concerned with.

Practice

practice — not a real PYQ
Under the Factories Act, 1948, a worker who works for more than forty-eight hours in a week is entitled to wages in respect of the overtime work at which one of the following rates ?
- (a)At the ordinary rate of wages
- (b)At one and a half times the ordinary rate of wages
- (c)At twice the ordinary rate of wages
- (d)At three times the ordinary rate of wages
Answer(c) At twice the ordinary rate of wages
practice — not a real PYQ
Under the Factories Act, 1948, the period of work of an adult worker in a factory shall be so arranged that inclusive of the intervals for rest, the spread-over shall not exceed :
- (a)9 hours in any day
- (b)10 hours in any day
- (c)10½ hours in any day
- (d)12 hours in any day
Answer(c) 10½ hours in any day

Why