AIBE Passing Marks 2026 – Category-Wise Qualifying Marks and How the Cut-off Moves

Updated 23 September 2026

The AIBE qualifying mark is 45% for General and OBC candidates and 40% for SC, ST and PwD candidates. On a hundred-question paper that is 45 marks and 40 marks. The percentage is fixed; the number of marks is not. In each of the last two examinations the score actually required to qualify came out below 45 and below 40, for two different reasons.

This page sets out the rule, the two mechanisms that move the number, what the Bar Council of India did with the AIBE XXI result, and what any of that means for the mark you should be working towards.

What are the passing marks for the AIBE?

The Bar Council of India sets the qualifying percentage. It is currently 45% for General and Other Backward Classes candidates and 40% for Scheduled Caste, Scheduled Tribe and Persons with Disability candidates.

Category	Qualifying percentage	Marks, on a paper of 100
General	45%	45
Other Backward Classes	45%	45
Scheduled Caste	40%	40
Scheduled Tribe	40%	40
Persons with Disability	40%	40

Each correct answer carries one mark. There is no negative marking, so a candidate’s score is simply the number of questions answered correctly. Leaving a question blank and answering it wrongly cost the same, which is to say nothing.

The authority for all of this sits in Rules 9 to 11 of Part VI, Chapter III of the Bar Council of India Rules, framed under section 49(1)(ah) of the Advocates Act, 1961, and inserted by a resolution of the Bar Council dated 30 April 2010. Rule 10(1)(d) is the operative one: the percentage of marks required to pass the Bar Examination shall be determined by the Bar Council of India.

Read that clause again. It fixes who decides, not what is decided. Nothing in the rules freezes the figure at 45.

Why the pass mark is not always 45

Two things can move the number after the paper has been written. They work differently and it is worth keeping them apart.

The first is withdrawal. Candidates may raise objections to questions after the provisional answer key is released. Where a question is withdrawn, whether for a technical error or on a valid objection, it is removed from the evaluation altogether. No bonus mark is awarded for it. The paper is then marked out of the reduced total.

The percentage holds and the arithmetic follows. In AIBE XX the Bar Council withdrew five questions after the objection window. The paper was evaluated out of 95. The qualifying score became 45% of 95, which is 42.75 and was taken as 43 for General and OBC candidates, and 40% of 95, which is 38, for SC, ST and PwD candidates.

The second is moderation. This is a separate power, and it is what happened in the most recent paper.

What the Bar Council did with the AIBE XXI result

AIBE XXI was held on 7 June 2026 across 292 examination centres in 60 cities. A total of 1,75,701 candidates appeared.

The examination was conducted under the supervision of the Monitoring Committee of the All India Bar Examination, headed by Hon’ble Ms Justice Hima Kohli, former Judge of the Supreme Court of India.

The Bar Council’s press release of 18 July 2026 records what the Committee then did. The result was directed to be calculated on the basis of 100 marks. No questions were removed, so the denominator stayed at 100. Having gone through the question paper and the result summary, the Committee decided unanimously to moderate the result and reduce the qualifying marks by three.

Category	Marks fixed	Marks after moderation
General and OBC	45	42
SC, ST and PwD	40	37

So the two papers arrived at a lower pass mark by opposite routes. AIBE XX shrank the paper. AIBE XXI left the paper at 100 and moved the line.

The outcome: 1,15,805 candidates qualified, 59,876 did not, and the results of 20 candidates were held pending decisions on alleged malpractice. The Bar Council put the overall pass percentage at 65.92%.

One figure circulates in a misleading form and is worth correcting. The category-wise table in the same release shows 1,15,014 in a column headed “Other than PwD” and 791 in the PwD column. The total qualified is the sum of the two, 1,15,805. Anywhere you see 1,15,014 given as the number who passed AIBE XXI, a column has been read as a total.

What is the cut-off for AIBE XXII?

It is not announced in advance, and on the record of the last two papers it would be unwise to plan around 45.

What is published in advance is the percentage. What is not settled until after the examination is the total the paper is marked out of, and whether the Monitoring Committee moderates. Both of those sit with the Bar Council, and both were used in the last two cycles.

A candidate can take one thing from this and one thing only: the qualifying score is a floor that has recently moved downwards, never upwards, and it has moved because the papers were found to be harder or longer than intended. That is not a reason to aim lower.

Registration, fees and dates for the current cycle change by notification. Confirm them on the official Bar Council of India portal before acting on anything you read anywhere, including here.

Is the AIBE difficult to pass?

Two thirds of the candidates who sat AIBE XXI qualified, after moderation. On that number alone the examination looks gentle.

The composition tells a different story. Taxmann’s tabulation of the last five papers, question by question, splits each paper into questions answerable by direct lookup, questions that need a search of the Bare Act, and questions that cannot be answered from a Bare Act at all because they turn on case law, doctrine or interpretation.

Paper	Questions not answerable from a Bare Act
AIBE XVII	22
AIBE XVIII	22
AIBE XIX	25
AIBE XX	13
AIBE XXI	27

Between AIBE XX and AIBE XXI that count roughly doubled. A candidate who prepared on the AIBE XX paper and carried a well-tabbed set of Bare Acts into AIBE XXI would have found twenty-seven questions the tabs could not reach.

The examination is not hard in the sense of being obscure. It is hard in the sense of being unstable, and of being long. Three hours for a hundred questions leaves ninety seconds each, and a question you have to look up consumes far more than ninety seconds if you do not already know where to look. Our note on the AIBE syllabus and exam pattern sets out the full nineteen-subject spread.

What happens if you do not pass

You sit it again. Rule 10(1)(e) is explicit: an unsuccessful advocate may appear again for the Bar Examination, without any limit on the number of attempts. Nothing in the rules caps attempts, and no fresh eligibility requirement attaches to a second attempt.

There is a clock, though, and it is not the examination’s. A law graduate who enrols with a State Bar Council before passing the AIBE receives a provisional enrolment certificate. That certificate permits work under a senior advocate. It does not permit independent practice or appearance in court, and it is valid for two years from the date of enrolment. The AIBE has to be passed inside that window for the enrolment to hold.

On the other side, Rule 11(1) requires the Certificate of Practice to be issued within thirty days of the date on which results are declared. The mechanics of getting it are covered in our walkthrough of the AIBE result process and the Certificate of Practice, and Taxmann.com | Students carries the wider set of resources for candidates working towards enrolment.

The mark you should actually be working towards

Not 45.

Take AIBE XXI as the working case, because it is the most recent and the most demanding of the five. Seventy-three of its hundred questions were answerable from a Bare Act by someone who could find the provision. Twenty-seven were not.

That splits preparation cleanly. The seventy-three are a retrieval problem. Knowing the law is not enough and is not really the point; you have to locate the sub-section, in a volume you may carry but may not annotate, inside ninety seconds. That improves only with timed practice on real papers, and Taxmann’s Bare Acts for the AIBE are published without comments so the copy you practise on is the copy you can carry.

The twenty-seven are a study problem, and no amount of tabbing will touch them. They are landmark judgments, constitutional doctrine, tort principles and jurisprudence. They have to be learned before exam day.

Work both and a General candidate should be sitting comfortably clear of 45 on a paper marked out of 100, which leaves the moderation question academic. Work only the first and a bad year puts you on the line.

Taxmann’s CRACKER for the AIBE carries 1,162 solved questions from AIBE X to AIBE XXI regrouped subject by subject, the whole AIBE XXI paper with its difficulty classification, and three full-length mock tests with OMR sheets. Our guide to using mock tests properly covers how to time them so the practice is worth something.

Frequently asked questions

What is the passing score for the AIBE?

45% for General and OBC candidates and 40% for SC, ST and PwD candidates. On a paper of 100 questions that is 45 marks and 40 marks, subject to any reduction in the total or moderation by the Bar Council.

What was the cut-off for AIBE XXI?

42 marks for General and OBC candidates and 37 for SC, ST and PwD. The paper was marked out of 100 and the Monitoring Committee reduced the qualifying marks by three.

Why does the AIBE pass mark change?

Two reasons. Withdrawn questions reduce the total the paper is marked out of, so the same percentage yields a lower score. Separately, the Monitoring Committee may moderate a result, as it did for AIBE XXI.

Is there negative marking in the AIBE?

No. Each correct answer carries one mark and nothing is deducted for a wrong answer, so there is no reason to leave a question unanswered.

What happens if I fail the AIBE?

You may sit it again. Rule 10(1)(e) of the Bar Council of India Rules places no limit on the number of attempts. A provisional enrolment certificate is valid for two years from enrolment, so the examination has to be passed within that period for the enrolment to remain effective.

How many candidates passed AIBE XXI?

1,15,805 of the 1,75,701 who appeared, a pass percentage of 65.92%. The figure of 1,15,014 sometimes quoted is the “other than PwD” sub-total, not the total.

Is the AIBE difficult to pass?

The pass rate is high, but the paper’s composition moves. In AIBE XXI, 27 of the 100 questions could not be answered from a Bare Act at all, against 13 in AIBE XX.

When is the Certificate of Practice issued?

Rule 11(1) requires it to be issued by the Bar Council of India within thirty days of the date on which the result is declared.

Qualifying marks, registration windows, fees and examination dates are set by the Bar Council of India and change by notification. Confirm the current position on the official Bar Council of India portal before acting on it.