EPFO EO/AO 2023 General Ability Test · Question 98 of 120

Correct — D, (d) The Chief Inspector of the State is the Chairman. The governing provision is SECTION 41A of the Factories Act, 1948, headed 'Constitution of Site Appraisal Committees'. Its opening words say that the State Government may, for the purpose of advising it on applications for permission for the initial location of a factory involving a hazardous process or for the expansion of any such factory, appoint a Site Appraisal Committee, and the very first clause of the list of members reads: the Chief Inspector of the State, who shall be its Chairman. The Act therefore fixes the chair by office, and it leaves the State Government no discretion about who holds it. The rest of the composition is worth knowing, because the identity of the chairman only makes sense against it. The committee also contains a representative of the Central Board for the Prevention and Control of Water Pollution and one of the Central Board for the Prevention and Control of Air Pollution; representatives of the corresponding State Boards under the Water Act of 1974 and the Air Act of 1981; a representative of the Department of Environment in the State; a representative of the Meteorological Department of the Government of India; an expert in the field of occupational health; and a representative of the State's Town Planning Department. Up to five further members may be co-opted, among them a scientist with specialised knowledge of the hazardous process involved and a representative of the local authority in whose area the factory is to be established. Where the factory belongs to the Central Government or to a corporation it controls, a nominee of the Central Government must be co-opted. So this is a technical committee, and the chair goes to the technical officer. The Chief Inspector, appointed under section 8, heads the factory inspectorate of the State and is the officer statutorily charged with factory safety; the other members bring pollution control, meteorology, occupational health and town planning to the table. Section 41A(2) requires the committee to examine an application and make its recommendation to the State Government within ninety days of receiving it, and section 41A(4) lets it call for information from the applicant. Section 41A(5) then relieves an approved applicant of the need to obtain further approval from the pollution control boards — a single-window effect that would be untenable if the committee were chaired by a political or general administrative officer rather than by the safety regulator. The context of the whole provision is worth carrying. Section 41A is the opening section of Chapter IVA, inserted by the Factories (Amendment) Act, 1987 in the aftermath of the Bhopal gas disaster of 1984, which added a group of sections on hazardous processes: compulsory disclosure of information by the occupier, the occupier's specific responsibilities, an Inquiry Committee appointed by the Central Government, emergency standards, permissible limits of exposure to toxic substances, safety committees, and the worker's right to warn of imminent danger. The Site Appraisal Committee is where that chapter begins, at the moment the site is chosen.

• (a)Labour Commissioner of the State is the Chairman. — The Labour Commissioner is the administrative head of a State's labour department and appears nowhere in section 41A. The confusion is understandable, because in many States the factory inspectorate is under the labour department and the Labour Commissioner is senior to the Chief Inspector in the administrative hierarchy. But the Act does not chair the committee by rank; it chairs it by function, and the function required here is technical regulation of factory safety. Naming the Labour Commissioner would also cut across the office the Act itself creates for exactly this purpose.
• (b)An independent person is appointed as the Chairman. — Section 41A names an office holder as chairman, so there is no appointment of an independent person to be made. The option borrows a design used elsewhere in Indian regulation, where a committee is deliberately chaired by someone outside the executive to secure impartiality, and invites the candidate to assume that a body appraising an industrialist's application must be chaired that way. It is not: the committee is advisory to the State Government, its members are drawn from named authorities and departments, and its independence comes from the range of regulators sitting on it rather than from an outsider in the chair.
• (c)The Labour Minister of the State is the ex-officio Chairman. — No minister sits on the Site Appraisal Committee at all, let alone as its ex-officio chairman. This is the least likely of the three wrong options once the purpose of the body is understood: the committee advises the State Government, and it would be circular for a minister of that government to chair the body advising it. The phrase 'ex-officio Chairman' is genuine statutory vocabulary and is used in other Indian bodies, which is what gives the option its surface plausibility, but it does not appear in section 41A.

The Factories Act, 1948 regulates the working conditions of workers in factories, and its enforcement machinery is the State inspectorate created by section 8: the State Government appoints Inspectors, and it appoints a Chief Inspector who exercises the powers of an Inspector throughout the State and supervises the rest. The Act's original scheme dealt with health, safety, welfare, working hours, employment of young persons, annual leave and penalties. After the Bhopal gas disaster of December 1984 exposed how little the Act said about catastrophic industrial risk, the Factories (Amendment) Act, 1987 added Chapter IVA on hazardous processes, defined a hazardous process by reference to the First Schedule of industries and the Second Schedule of permissible exposure limits, and built a chain of controls running from the choice of site to the worker's own right to act. Section 41A begins that chain by placing an expert committee between an application to locate or expand a hazardous factory and the State Government's permission. Section 41B requires the occupier to disclose information about hazards to workers, the Chief Inspector, the local authority and the general public, and to draw up an on-site emergency plan. Section 41C imposes specific responsibilities including the maintenance of health records and the employment of qualified supervisors. Section 41G requires a Safety Committee with equal representation of workers and management in every factory carrying on a hazardous process. Section 41H gives workers the right to warn about imminent danger. Read together, the chapter is an attempt to make industrial safety a matter of anticipation rather than of post-accident inquiry.

The Factories Act is the most heavily examined statute in the EO/AO labour law blocks after the provident fund legislation, and questions on it usually name an office, a threshold or a time limit. This item is the 'who chairs it' form, which is common because such bodies exist across the labour statutes and their chairs differ. The habit rewarded is asking what the body is FOR before choosing a chairman: a technical committee is chaired by a technical officer, a conciliation body by a conciliation officer, an adjudicatory body by a judicial officer. Note that all four options here are printed as complete sentences ending in full stops, which is unusual on this paper and is reproduced as set.

• Section 41A of the Factories Act, 1948 constitutes the Site Appraisal Committee, and the Chief Inspector of the State is its Chairman.
• The committee advises the State Government on applications for the initial location or expansion of a factory involving a hazardous process.
• Its members include representatives of the Central and State pollution control boards under the Water Act, 1974 and the Air Act, 1981, the State Department of Environment, the Meteorological Department, an occupational health expert and the Town Planning Department.
• Up to five members may be co-opted, including a scientist with knowledge of the hazardous process and a representative of the local authority.
• Section 41A(2) gives the committee ninety days from receipt of an application to make its recommendation.
• Where the State Government approves such an application, no further approval is needed from the pollution control boards.
• Chapter IVA, containing sections 41A to 41H, was inserted by the Factories (Amendment) Act, 1987 after the Bhopal gas disaster.
• The Chief Inspector is appointed under section 8 and exercises the powers of an Inspector throughout the State.

• Choosing the Labour Commissioner because he is administratively senior; the Act chairs the committee by function, not by rank.
• Assuming an advisory committee must be chaired by an independent outsider.
• Placing a minister on a body whose purpose is to advise his own government.
• Forgetting the ninety-day limit within which the committee must report, which is examined as often as the composition.

Factories Act questions in EO/AO papers ask who holds a named office, what numerical threshold brings a provision into play — ten workers with power or twenty without, one hundred and fifty for a lunch room, five hundred for a safety officer — or how long an authority has to act. Learn the offices of section 8 and section 10 together with the committees of Chapter IVA, and attach a section number to each.

No directly related past PYQ was found.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  Under the Factories Act, 1948, the Site Appraisal Committee must make its recommendation to the State Government within :

  • (a)Thirty days of receipt of the application
  • (b)Sixty days of receipt of the application
  • (c)Ninety days of receipt of the application
  • (d)One hundred and eighty days of receipt of the application

  Answer(c) Ninety days of receipt of the application

• practice — not a real PYQ

  Chapter IVA of the Factories Act, 1948, containing provisions relating to hazardous processes, was inserted by the amendment of :

  • (a)1976
  • (b)1987
  • (c)1997
  • (d)2016

  Answer(b) 1987