EPFO EO/AO 2023 General Ability Test · Question 97 of 120

Correct — A, (a) The Prescribed Medical Authority. The provision is SECTION 10 of the Child and Adolescent Labour (Prohibition and Regulation) Act, 1986, headed 'Disputes as to age'. It says that if any question arises between an Inspector and an occupier as to the age of any child or adolescent who is employed or permitted to work in an establishment, the question shall, in the absence of a certificate as to age granted by the prescribed medical authority, be referred by the Inspector for decision to the prescribed medical authority. Read the section slowly and it answers the question in its own words. The dispute is between the Inspector and the occupier. The trigger is the absence of an age certificate — which is what the stem means by 'the absence of any authentic document'. The person who makes the reference is the Inspector. And the authority that decides is the prescribed medical authority, meaning the medical authority prescribed by rules made under the Act. So the reference goes to a doctor, not to a court and not to an officer of government. The design makes sense once the nature of the question is seen. Age, in the absence of a birth certificate or a school record, is a question of physical fact, established by medical examination — bone ossification, dentition, general development. It is not a question of law and there is nothing to adjudicate between competing legal claims; there is only a fact to be determined. Sending it to a doctor is quicker, cheaper and more accurate than sending it to a tribunal, and it means an inspection can be completed without the case going anywhere near litigation. Age is the pivotal fact under this Act, which is why it needed its own machinery. The Act, as amended in 2016, prohibits the employment of a CHILD — a person who has not completed fourteen years, aligned with the age of compulsory schooling under the Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education Act, 2009 — in any occupation or process, with narrow exceptions for helping in a family enterprise after school hours or in vacations and for work as an artist in the audio-visual entertainment industry other than a circus. It separately prohibits the employment of an ADOLESCENT — a person who has completed fourteen years but not eighteen — in the hazardous occupations and processes set out in the Schedule. Whether an employer has broken the law therefore turns entirely on which side of fourteen, or of eighteen, the worker falls, and an occupier faced with an inspection has every incentive to assert the higher age. Section 10 removes that argument from the occupier's hands by handing the question to a medical authority.

• (b)The Labour Court — A Labour Court is a creature of the Industrial Disputes Act, 1947, constituted under section 7 of that Act to adjudicate industrial disputes referred to it and the matters listed in its Second Schedule. It has no role under the Child and Adolescent Labour Act, which provides no reference to any court for this purpose, and a dispute about a worker's physical age is in any event not an industrial dispute between employer and workmen about employment terms. The option is attractive only because 'dispute' appears in the stem, and it tests whether the candidate attaches the right forum to the right statute.
• (c)The Inspector appointed under the Act — The Inspector is one of the two parties to the dispute, not its judge. Section 10 opens with the words 'if any question arises between an Inspector and an occupier', so the Inspector is on one side of the disagreement; what the section gives him is the duty to REFER the question, not the power to decide it. Deciding it himself would make him a judge in his own cause. Inspectors are appointed under section 17 and have wide powers of entry, examination and prosecution, and it is precisely because those powers are wide that the Act sends the contested fact to an independent medical authority.
• (d)The Appropriate Government — The appropriate government has a real role here, but it is one step removed. It makes the rules under the Act, and it is by those rules that the medical authority is PRESCRIBED — that is the force of the word 'prescribed' in the phrase 'prescribed medical authority'. Having designated the authority in advance, it does not then decide individual cases. The distinction between the body that designates a decision-maker and the decision-maker itself is one that Indian labour statutes draw constantly, and this option exists to test whether a candidate reads 'prescribed' as the technical term it is.

The Child and Adolescent Labour (Prohibition and Regulation) Act, 1986 took its present name and shape from the amending Act of 2016, which converted a statute that had merely regulated child labour in non-hazardous work into one that prohibits it altogether. Its architecture rests on two age categories. A child is a person who has not completed his fourteenth year, or such age as the Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education Act, 2009 specifies, and no child may be employed in any occupation or process, subject to two narrow exceptions — helping in a family or family enterprise in non-hazardous work after school hours or during vacations, and working as an artist in the audio-visual entertainment industry, excluding the circus, with safety measures and without prejudice to education. An adolescent is a person who has completed fourteen years but not eighteen, and an adolescent may not be employed in the hazardous occupations and processes listed in the Schedule, which draws on the hazardous processes identified under the Factories Act, 1948. Around these two prohibitions the Act builds enforcement: Inspectors appointed under section 17 and District Magistrates empowered under section 17A; registers of young workers and notices displayed under sections 11 and 12; the Child and Adolescent Labour Rehabilitation Fund into which fines are credited; and penalties for an employer of imprisonment and fine, with heavier punishment for a repeat offence. Section 10 is the piece that keeps the whole structure workable, because every prohibition in the Act depends on a fact — the worker's age — which is frequently undocumented.

The labour law blocks of the EO/AO paper repeatedly ask which authority does what, because that is the daily substance of an enforcement officer's work: knowing where a question goes. The construction here is standard — one correct forum and three plausible ones drawn from the general vocabulary of labour administration. The habit rewarded is reading the operative section rather than reasoning from what seems sensible, because Indian labour statutes often route a question somewhere a candidate would not guess. Note the booklet's spacing before the question mark, which is its style throughout the paper.

• Section 10 of the Child and Adolescent Labour (Prohibition and Regulation) Act, 1986 governs disputes as to age.
• The question is referred by the Inspector, and it is decided by the prescribed medical authority.
• The reference arises only in the absence of a certificate as to age granted by that authority.
• A 'child' under the Act is a person who has not completed fourteen years; an 'adolescent' has completed fourteen but not eighteen.
• The 2016 amendment renamed the Act and prohibited the employment of children in all occupations and processes, with narrow exceptions for family enterprises and audio-visual entertainment.
• Adolescents are prohibited from the hazardous occupations and processes listed in the Schedule to the Act.
• Inspectors are appointed under section 17, and District Magistrates may be conferred inspectors' powers under section 17A.
• Fines recovered under the Act are credited to the Child and Adolescent Labour Rehabilitation Fund.

• Sending a statutory question to a Labour Court because the word 'dispute' appears; Labour Courts belong to the Industrial Disputes Act, 1947.
• Making the Inspector the decider when the section makes him a party who refers.
• Reading 'appropriate government' as the decision-maker rather than as the body that prescribes the medical authority by rules.
• Confusing the definitions of child and adolescent, which carry different prohibitions under the same Act.

Questions on this Act ask for the age definitions, the exceptions to the prohibition on child employment, the authority that decides a disputed age, or the penalty for a first and a repeat offence. Learn the Act as four items — who is a child, who is an adolescent, what each may not do, and who decides when the facts are contested — and attach the section number to each.

No directly related past PYQ was found.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  Under the Child and Adolescent Labour (Prohibition and Regulation) Act, 1986, an 'adolescent' means a person who has :

  • (a)Not completed his fourteenth year
  • (b)Completed his fourteenth year but not his eighteenth year
  • (c)Completed his fifteenth year but not his eighteenth year
  • (d)Completed his sixteenth year but not his twenty-first year

  Answer(b) Completed his fourteenth year but not his eighteenth year

• practice — not a real PYQ

  Under the Child and Adolescent Labour (Prohibition and Regulation) Act, 1986, a question as to age is referred to the prescribed medical authority by :

  • (a)The occupier of the establishment
  • (b)The Inspector
  • (c)The District Magistrate
  • (d)The appropriate government

  Answer(b) The Inspector