Question

In the following question, a Statement is followed by two Conclusions, I and II. Statement: Section 5 of the Minimum Wages Act, 1948 gives a detailed procedure for fixing or revising minimum wages in respect of any scheduled employment. After considering the advice of the committees appointed, and all representations received by it before the date notified in the Gazette notification, the appropriate Government may by notification in the official gazette, fix or revise the minimum rates of wages. Conclusion I: If a date is specified in the notification, the minimum rates shall come into force from such date. Conclusion II: If no date is specified, then they shall come into force from the expiry of three months from the date of issue of the notification. In the context of the above Statement and Conclusions, which one of the following is correct?

• A. Only Conclusion II follows
• B. Only Conclusion I follows
• C. Both Conclusions I and II follow
• D. Neither Conclusion I nor II follows

Hint:

Remember the "Three-Month Default" rule: Minimum wage notifications are effective from the date they say, but if they forget a date, the law automatically defaults to an expiry of three months!

Answer 1

The Correct Option is C

The statement describes the government's process for fixing or revising minimum wages under Section 5, and the two conclusions each describe a different commencement scenario that the section covers.

1. Only Conclusion II follows: This treats the "specified date" rule as absent from the law, when in fact Section 5(2) plainly allows the government to name a commencement date in the notification.
2. Only Conclusion I follows: This treats the three-month default rule as absent, when the section equally provides that silence on the date means the rates start after three months from issue.
3. Both Conclusions I and II follow: Section 5(2) is essentially an "either/or" rule, either the notification states a date, in which case that date governs (Conclusion I), or it does not, in which case the three-month default applies (Conclusion II). Both branches of this rule are explicitly present in the law, so both conclusions are legally sound.
4. Neither Conclusion follows: This would require both rules to be absent from the statute, which is not the case since the text explicitly provides for each scenario.

Because the statute lays out both branches of the commencement rule side by side, both conclusions drawn from it hold true.

\[ \boxed{\text{Both Conclusions I and II follow}} \]

Answer 2

A useful way to check statement-and-conclusion questions like this is to see whether each conclusion is an independent legal rule or merely an inference, and here both conclusions turn out to be direct restatements of the law.

1. Option (A) - Only Conclusion II: Accepting only this conclusion would mean the law never lets the government fix its own commencement date, which is factually wrong since Section 5(2) allows exactly that.
2. Option (B) - Only Conclusion I: Accepting only this conclusion would mean there is no fallback rule when a date is not specified, but the three-month default is expressly written into the same subsection.
3. Option (C) - Both Conclusions I and II follow: Since Section 5(2) itself contains both the "specified date governs" rule and the "three months by default" rule as two halves of one commencement scheme, both conclusions are simply direct restatements of the same subsection and must both be accepted together.
4. Option (D) - Neither follows: This can only be correct if the statement misquotes the law, but the statement's description of Section 5 and the government's notification process matches the Act accurately, so this option has no basis.

Both conclusions describe two halves of the very same statutory rule, so both must be accepted together.

Hence, the correct answer is Both Conclusions I and II follow.