EPFO EO/AO 2023 General Ability Test · Question 28 of 120

Correct — A, (a) A-4, B-3, C-2, D-1. Each term in List I is a term of art belonging to exactly one of the four statutes, so the item is decided pair by pair: A. Recovery Officer → 4. The Employees' Provident Fund and Miscellaneous Provisions Act, 1952. 'Recovery Officer' is defined in section 2(ee) of the EPF Act, and sections 8B to 8G are the recovery machinery: the authorised officer issues a certificate under section 8B specifying the arrears due from the employer, and the Recovery Officer then recovers the amount by attachment and sale of property, by arrest and detention, or by appointing a receiver. This is the enforcement arm an EPFO officer works with directly. B. Compulsory Insurance → 3. The Payment of Gratuity Act, 1972. Section 4A, headed 'Compulsory insurance', requires every employer to obtain insurance for his gratuity liability from the Life Insurance Corporation or another prescribed insurer, with exemption available to an employer who already has an approved gratuity fund and to a large employer who establishes one. C. Scheduled Employment → 2. The Minimum Wages Act, 1948. Section 2(g) defines 'scheduled employment' as an employment specified in the Schedule to that Act, and the whole architecture of minimum wage fixation under the 1948 Act is confined to those employments. D. Subsistence Allowance → 1. The Industrial Employment (Standing Orders) Act, 1946. Section 10A, 'Payment of subsistence allowance', governs the workman suspended pending inquiry: fifty per cent of wages for the first ninety days of suspension, and seventy-five per cent thereafter where the delay in completing the inquiry is not directly attributable to the workman. As a code table, this item is again two binary choices rather than four independent ones. Column A carries only two values — 4 in options (a) and (b), 1 in options (c) and (d) — so recognising the Recovery Officer as an EPF Act figure eliminates half the paper immediately. What then separates (a) from (b) is only the B and C columns, and 'scheduled employment' unmistakably belongs to the Minimum Wages Act, which fixes C-2 and delivers option (a).

• (b)A-4, B-2, C-3, D-1 — Right at both ends and wrong in the middle: it hands compulsory insurance to the Minimum Wages Act and scheduled employment to the Payment of Gratuity Act. Neither term exists in the statute it is given to — there is no insurance obligation anywhere in the 1948 Act, and the Gratuity Act has no Schedule of employments. This is the designed near-miss, and it is beaten by either one of the two middle pairs.
• (c)A-1, B-2, C-3, D-4 — Reverses the two outer pairs, putting the Recovery Officer in the Standing Orders Act and subsistence allowance in the EPF Act, and it carries the same middle inversion as option (b). The Standing Orders Act creates no recovery machinery at all — it is about certifying conditions of service — and the EPF Act has nothing to say about suspension pending inquiry.
• (d)A-1, B-3, C-2, D-4 — Has the middle pairs right — compulsory insurance to gratuity, scheduled employment to minimum wages — but swaps the outer two, giving the Recovery Officer to the Standing Orders Act and subsistence allowance to the EPF Act. A candidate who verified only the B and C rows and stopped there would be trapped here, which is exactly why the elimination should start at column A.

Indian labour law is a set of separate statutes, each with its own vocabulary, and the single most useful thing a candidate can build is a map of which term belongs to which Act. The four terms here are a good sample of the range: one is an enforcement office (Recovery Officer, EPF Act), one is a funding obligation on the employer (compulsory insurance, Gratuity Act), one is a scope-defining definition (scheduled employment, Minimum Wages Act) and one is a service-conditions protection (subsistence allowance, Standing Orders Act). Learn each term with its section, and matching items collapse into recall.

Match List items on statute vocabulary are a fixture of the EO/AO labour block because they test breadth cheaply — four statutes in one question. For a post whose work is enforcement, knowing which Act a term comes from is the practical skill: a Recovery Officer's certificate and a subsistence allowance dispute are governed by entirely different laws with entirely different authorities. The habit rewarded is column reading — find the pair you are surest of, use it to halve the options, then decide the remaining column.

• EPF & MP Act, 1952 — 'Recovery Officer' defined in section 2(ee); recovery machinery in sections 8B to 8G, beginning with the certificate under section 8B.
• Payment of Gratuity Act, 1972 — section 4A, 'Compulsory insurance', requires the employer to insure his gratuity liability with LIC or another prescribed insurer.
• Minimum Wages Act, 1948 — 'scheduled employment' defined in section 2(g) as an employment specified in the Schedule.
• Industrial Employment (Standing Orders) Act, 1946 — section 10A, subsistence allowance during suspension: 50% of wages for the first 90 days, 75% thereafter where the delay is not attributable to the workman.
• The Recovery Officer may recover arrears by attachment and sale of the employer's property, by arrest and detention, or by appointing a receiver.
• The Standing Orders Act is about certifying conditions of service in industrial establishments, not about recovery of dues.
• The Payment of Gratuity Act has no Schedule of employments; the Minimum Wages Act does, and it is the Schedule that defines the Act's reach.

• Attaching 'Recovery Officer' to the Industrial Disputes Act or the Standing Orders Act. It is an EPF Act office.
• Assuming compulsory insurance belongs to the ESI Act because both involve insurance. Section 4A is in the Gratuity Act, and it insures the employer's liability, not the worker's health.
• Confusing subsistence allowance (Standing Orders Act, suspension pending inquiry) with retrenchment compensation or lay-off compensation (Industrial Disputes Act).
• Verifying only the middle pairs of a code table. Options (b) and (d) are both built to catch a candidate who stops halfway.

EPFO EO/AO prints three Match List items in this paper and at least one of them is usually statute vocabulary. Prepare it as a two-column sheet — term, section, Act — rather than as prose, because that is the exact shape in which the paper asks for it.

No directly related past PYQ was found.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  Under the Industrial Employment (Standing Orders) Act, 1946, the subsistence allowance payable to a workman suspended pending inquiry, for the first ninety days of suspension, is :

  • (a)Twenty-five per cent of wages
  • (b)Fifty per cent of wages
  • (c)Seventy-five per cent of wages
  • (d)The full wages

  Answer(b) Fifty per cent of wages

• practice — not a real PYQ

  The provision for compulsory insurance of an employer's liability towards gratuity is contained in :

  • (a)Section 4 of the Payment of Gratuity Act, 1972
  • (b)Section 4A of the Payment of Gratuity Act, 1972
  • (c)Section 7 of the Payment of Gratuity Act, 1972
  • (d)Section 2A of the Payment of Gratuity Act, 1972

  Answer(b) Section 4A of the Payment of Gratuity Act, 1972