Assistant Provident Fund Commissioner and Enforcement Officer / Accounts Officer (APFC and EO/AO) 2025 recruitment test. Transcribed from the Commission's own booklet (series A, PENA-A-PTS); answer worked out by our faculty — UPSC has published no answer key for this sitting. This question is in Part B. Answer last reviewed 25 August 2026.

Consider the following statements regarding Social Protection in India : 1. The World Social Protection Report (WSPR) 2024 – 26 released by the International Labour Organization estimates that India's social protection coverage has doubled from 2021 to 2024. 2. The Ministry of Labour and Employment estimates that nearly 65% of the population are now covered by at least one form of social protection, whether in cash or in kind, through Central Government schemes. Which of the statements given above is/are correct ?

(a)1 only
(b)2 only
(c)Both 1 and 2
(d)Neither 1 nor 2

Answer

Why

Correct — C, (c) Both 1 and 2.

Both statements come from the same announcement, and both are accurate.

Statement 1 is correct. The International Labour Organization's World Social Protection Report 2024-26 puts India's social protection coverage at 48.8 per cent in 2024, against 24.4 per cent in 2021. The second figure is exactly twice the first, so the coverage has doubled over those three years, which is what the statement says. The Ministry of Labour and Employment's own release on the report is headed with that fact - coverage reaching 48.8 per cent in 2024, up from 24.4 per cent in 2021 - and attributes the rise to the extension of health insurance, pensions and employment support. India's gain was large enough to lift the global coverage figure by about five percentage points on its own.

Statement 2 is correct and is a different measurement of the same subject, which is why the two do not contradict each other. As per the Ministry of Labour and Employment, nearly 920 million people, or 65 per cent of the population, are now covered by at least one form of social protection, whether in cash or in kind, through central government schemes. Every element of the statement matches: the estimating authority, the proportion, the cash-or-kind qualification and the restriction to central schemes.

The apparent tension between 48.8 per cent and 65 per cent is the point worth understanding. The ILO's validated figure counts a narrower category of benefit, while the higher figure includes benefits delivered in kind - food security and housing among them - which the international measure does not capture in the same way. Two different definitions of coverage produce two different percentages of the same population, and a statement that reports each with its own source and its own qualifiers is correct in both cases.

Why the others are wrong

(a)1 only — This option accepts the ILO figure and rejects the Ministry's. The Ministry's estimate is on the record in the same release that reports the ILO figure, and the statement reproduces its terms closely - nearly 65 per cent of the population, covered by at least one form of social protection, in cash or in kind, through central government schemes. A candidate is likely to reject it because 65 per cent sits so far above the 48.8 per cent in the first statement that the two look inconsistent. They are not: they count different things, and the statement's own qualifier about benefits in kind is the clue to the difference.
(b)2 only — This option accepts the Ministry's figure and rejects the report. The doubling is the headline finding of the World Social Protection Report 2024-26 as it concerns India, and the arithmetic is exact rather than approximate - 24.4 per cent in 2021 against 48.8 per cent in 2024. The statement also attributes the report correctly to the International Labour Organization and gives its edition correctly as 2024-26. There is nothing in it to reject, and rejecting it usually means doubting the scale of the improvement rather than checking the figures.
(d)Neither 1 nor 2 — This option rejects both statements, which would require the report's headline finding about India and the Ministry's own published estimate to be wrong together. Neither is. The option is the natural refuge for a candidate who has noticed that 48.8 per cent and 65 per cent cannot both describe the same quantity and has concluded that at least one of them must be false. The right inference from that observation is the opposite one: two figures that differ must be measuring different things, and here the difference - benefits in kind - is stated in the second statement itself.

Concept

Social protection coverage is not a single number, and knowing why is what these questions are really testing.

The International Labour Organization's World Social Protection Report is the standard global assessment. It measures the proportion of a population effectively covered by at least one social protection benefit, using an agreed set of categories - old age, sickness, maternity, disability, employment injury, unemployment, and family and child benefits - and it counts a country's coverage only where the data can be validated against those categories. The 2024-26 edition records India's coverage at 48.8 per cent in 2024 against 24.4 per cent in 2021.

A national estimate may be wider. The Ministry of Labour and Employment's figure of nearly 920 million people, or 65 per cent of the population, counts benefits delivered in kind alongside cash - the kind of support that food security and housing programmes provide - and confines itself to central government schemes.

The gap between the two therefore has a definite cause: what is counted as a benefit. A third source of difference, which matters for later revisions, is whether State schemes are included alongside central ones, since a great deal of Indian social protection is delivered by the States.

For an EPFO candidate this is domain knowledge rather than current affairs. The two largest contributors to India's measured coverage are the schemes the Organization itself administers - the provident fund, pension and insurance schemes under the EPF and Miscellaneous Provisions Act, 1952 - together with employees' State insurance, and the data pooling exercise that produced the improved figures worked by matching records across major central schemes using a unique identifier.

Current affairs on these papers are drawn heavily from the Ministry of Labour and Employment's own announcements, which is unsurprising for a recruitment test to that Ministry's organisations. Reports on social protection, employment data, wage codes and provident fund administration recur, and the statements are usually lifted close to the wording of the press release.

That has a practical consequence. Where a statement reproduces an official release almost verbatim - naming the report, the years, the percentages and the qualifiers - it is far more likely to be correct than altered, because the examiner has taken it from a source rather than composed it. The alteration, when there is one, is usually in a number or in an attribution, and both can be checked against memory of the release.

This item is also a good example of a two-statement set in which the statements look inconsistent and are not. That construction rewards a candidate who reads the qualifiers - 'whether in cash or in kind', 'through Central Government schemes' - rather than only the headline numbers, because the qualifiers are what reconcile the two figures.

Key facts

The ILO's World Social Protection Report 2024-26 records India's social protection coverage at 48.8 per cent in 2024, against 24.4 per cent in 2021 - an exact doubling over three years.
The Ministry of Labour and Employment estimates that nearly 920 million people, about 65 per cent of the population, are covered by at least one form of social protection, in cash or in kind, through central government schemes.
The two figures differ because they count different things: the international measure is based on validated benefit categories, while the national estimate includes benefits delivered in kind, such as food security and housing support.
India's improvement was large enough to raise measured global social protection coverage by about five percentage points.
The improvement in the measured figure followed a data pooling exercise that matched beneficiary records across major central schemes using a unique identifier, so that a person covered by more than one scheme is counted once.

Study next

The ILO's World Social Protection Report: what it measures, the benefit categories it uses, and how effective coverage is defined.India's principal social security schemes and the population each reaches - the EPF schemes, employees' State insurance, the Atal Pension Yojana and the national social assistance programmes.The Code on Social Security, 2020 and its provisions for gig and platform workers and for the unorganised sector.Cash against in-kind benefits in social protection, and why the choice between them changes both cost and measured coverage.The division of social security between the Union and the States under the Seventh Schedule, and its effect on national coverage statistics.

Common traps

Treating 48.8 per cent and 65 per cent as rival estimates of the same quantity and rejecting one of them; they measure different definitions of coverage.
Reading past the qualifiers in the second statement - in cash or in kind, through central government schemes - which are what reconcile it with the first.
Attributing the doubling figure to the Ministry and the 65 per cent figure to the ILO, which reverses the two sources.
Assuming that a large reported improvement must be an exaggeration; the 2021 and 2024 figures stand in an exact two-to-one ratio.
Confusing the edition of the report; it is the World Social Protection Report 2024-26.

Social security is the core subject of this recruitment, and current-affairs items on it are set at the level of the specific announcement: the report, the year, the percentage, the estimating body. The statements are usually two rather than three, with the Both/Neither ladder as the option list, and they are commonly drawn from a single press release, so that a candidate who has read that release recognises both at once. Where a paper sets two figures that appear to conflict, the reconciliation is almost always in a qualifier printed in the statement itself - the benefit categories counted, the level of government, or the year of measurement.

Related PYQs

EPFO_APFC_2016_Q111

Social Security may provide cash benefits to persons faced with 1. Sickness and disability 2. Unemployment 3. Crop failure 4. Loss of the marital partner Select the correct answer using the codes given below :

(a) 1, 2 and 3 only
(b) 1, 2 and 4 only
(c) 3 and 4 only
(d) 1, 2, 3 and 4

Answer(d) 1, 2, 3 and 4

Asks which contingencies social security may provide cash benefits against - sickness and disability, unemployment, crop failure, loss of a marital partner - the conceptual counterpart to this item's coverage statistics.

EPFO_APFC_2016_Q100

Consider the following statements in respect of Atal Pension Yojana : 1. Beneficiary must be in the age group of 18 to 40 years. 2. Beneficiary will receive the pension only after he attains the age of 60 years. 3. After the death of a beneficiary, his spouse continues to receive the pension. 4. No nominee of the beneficiary is permitted. Which of the above statements are correct ?

(a) 3 and 4 only
(b) 1, 3 and 4 only
(c) 1, 2 and 3 only
(d) 1, 2, 3 and 4

Answer(c) 1, 2 and 3 only

A statement set on the Atal Pension Yojana, one of the central schemes whose beneficiaries are counted in India's social protection coverage.

EPFO_APFC_2016_Q102

Consider the following statements regarding the Pradhan Mantri Suraksha Bima Yojana : 1. It is applicable for all bank account holders up to the age of 60 years. 2. It is a life insurance cover. 3. It is an accident insurance cover. 4. The insurance covers death and permanent disability due to accident. Which of the above statements are correct ?

(a) 1 and 2 only
(b) 3 and 4 only
(c) 2 and 3 only
(d) 1 and 4 only

Answer(b) 3 and 4 only

On the Pradhan Mantri Suraksha Bima Yojana, another of the central schemes that make up the coverage figures reported here.

Practice

practice — not a real PYQ
According to the ILO's World Social Protection Report 2024-26, India's social protection coverage in 2024 stood at about :
- (a)24 per cent
- (b)35 per cent
- (c)49 per cent
- (d)65 per cent
Answer(c) 49 per cent - the report puts coverage at 48.8 per cent in 2024, against 24.4 per cent in 2021. The 65 per cent figure is the Ministry of Labour and Employment's own estimate on a wider definition that includes benefits in kind.
practice — not a real PYQ
Two estimates of India's social protection coverage differ, one being materially higher than the other. Which of the following best explains the difference ?
- (a)One counts only urban beneficiaries
- (b)One includes benefits delivered in kind while the other counts a narrower set of validated benefit categories
- (c)One is measured before deductions and the other after
- (d)One counts households and the other individuals
Answer(b) One includes benefits delivered in kind while the other counts a narrower set of validated benefit categories - the definition of what counts as a benefit is what separates the national and international figures.

Why