AIBE Syllabus 2026 and Exam Pattern – Subject-Wise Weightage Explained

Updated 23 September 2026

The AIBE syllabus covers nineteen subjects across 100 questions. Constitutional Law, the Criminal Procedure Code with the BNSS, and the Code of Civil Procedure carry 10 questions each. The Indian Penal Code with the BNS, the Evidence Act with the BSA, the Contract group and Family Law carry 8 each. The paper is offline, open book, three hours, one mark per question with no negative marking, and the qualifying mark is 45% for General and OBC candidates and 40% for SC, ST and PwD.

The weightage below is what the Bar Council publishes. What the recent papers actually asked is a different table, and section 3 sets the two side by side.

Table of Contents

1. AIBE syllabus – subject-wise weightage
2. AIBE exam pattern
3. What the recent papers actually asked
4. Which statutes are current
5. How to prioritise your preparation
6. Common mistakes to avoid
7. Frequently asked questions

1. AIBE syllabus – subject-wise weightage

Nineteen subjects, listed in descending order of weightage. The number of questions is what tells you where to spend time.

Three subjects carry 30 marks between them. Four more carry 32. The bottom five carry 10 in total. That shape should drive the study plan.

2. AIBE exam pattern

One point about the open-book format, because it is widely misunderstood. Open book does not mean you may carry textbooks and notes. It means you may carry Bare Acts without notes, comments or annotations, and nothing else. The instruction printed on the question paper reads: “Bare Acts without notes are allowed. In case of unavailability of Bare Acts without notes, Bare Acts with least short Notes will be allowed subject to the discretion of the Examiner/Invigilator.” Guides, commentaries, annotated editions and handwritten notes are prohibited, and marked or highlighted copies are frequently rejected at the centre.

That is why the format is harder than it sounds. One hundred questions in three hours is ninety seconds each, and the constraint is finding the provision, not knowing it.

3. What the recent papers actually asked

The published weightage is a plan, not a promise. Taxmann’s editorial team classified every question in the recent papers against the nineteen subjects, and the counts came out as follows.

Three conclusions, each of which should change how you allocate time.

Constitutional Law has never come in at its stated weightage. Advertised at ten, it ran twelve, fifteen and fourteen. Across those three papers it averaged more than thirteen, making it comfortably the largest single block on the paper. Preparing it as equal in size to CPC under-prepares the biggest subject there is.

Seven subjects have not moved at all. Evidence and the BSA, ADR, Taxation, Company Law, Environmental Law, Cyber Law and Intellectual Property came in at exactly their stated figure in all three papers. For those, the published weightage is reliable to the question.

The volatility is concentrated. Outside Constitutional Law it sits in the Contract, Specific Relief, Property and Negotiable Instruments group, which ran eleven and twelve before dropping back to eight, and in the small subjects, where Land Acquisition returned zero in AIBE XX. A two-mark subject that sometimes returns nothing does not deserve a week.

There is a second dimension the weightage does not capture: whether a question can be answered from a Bare Act at all.

That column never falls below thirteen. Between an eighth and a quarter of the paper turns on case law, doctrine or interpretation, and no amount of tabbing reaches it. It has to be studied before the day.

4. Which statutes are current

Two parts of the syllabus are mid-transition, and preparing on repealed provisions will cost marks.

Criminal law. Questions are now set across the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita, 2023, the Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita, 2023 and the Bharatiya Sakshya Adhiniyam, 2023, as well as the codes they replace. Both sets appear in the same paper: AIBE XXI asked about section 65B of the Indian Evidence Act, 1872 and about the Bharatiya Sakshya Adhiniyam in the same sitting. Carry six volumes for criminal law, not three. Our guide to the new criminal laws in the AIBE maps the provisions that have moved and, more usefully, the ones where the position itself has changed.

Taxation. The taxation paper is now written on the Income Tax Act, 2025, in force from 1 April 2026. Four questions, reliably, in every recent paper.

Labour law. Written on the four consolidated labour codes, which subsume the earlier Acts. Four questions, again reliably.

5. How to prioritise your preparation

• Weight the time to the table, then adjust for Constitutional Law. The three ten-mark subjects and Constitutional Law’s real size account for roughly 45 marks between them.
• Do not ignore the small subjects. Seven of them are perfectly predictable at two to four questions each, which makes them the cheapest marks on the paper. Twenty marks sit in subjects that behave exactly as advertised.
• Tab and index your Bare Acts at chapter level. The skill being tested is retrieval, not recall. Learn to reach a provision from the index rather than by leafing.
• Work past papers under the clock, with the clean Bare Acts you will actually carry. Timed mock tests are where speed is built.
• Study the conceptual material separately. The thirteen to twenty-seven questions the Bare Act cannot reach are landmark judgments, constitutional doctrine, tort principles and jurisprudence.

6. Common mistakes to avoid

• Assuming open book means you can carry notes. You cannot. Only Bare Acts without notes, and marked copies are often refused at the door.
• Relying on the search instead of the study. A quarter of the paper is not in the Act on your desk.
• Calibrating on one paper. AIBE XX was the softest of five papers and AIBE XXI the hardest. Work several.
• Leaving questions blank. There is no negative marking, so a blank and a wrong answer cost the same.
• Preparing criminal law on the old codes alone, or taxation on the 1961 Act.

For material, Taxmann’s Bare Acts for the AIBE cover all nineteen subjects without comments, and the CRACKER for the AIBE carries 1,162 solved questions from AIBE X to AIBE XXI regrouped subject by subject, the full AIBE XXI paper with its difficulty classification, and three mock tests with OMR sheets. Where a question turns on a judgment rather than a provision, Taxmann.com | Research carries the reported decisions and the statutory history.

7. Frequently asked questions