EPFO EO/AO 2023 General Ability Test · Question 23 of 120

Correct — A, (a) A-1, B-3, C-2, D-4. Taking the pairs one at a time: A. Lahore Session, 1909 → 1. Madan Mohan Malaviya. This was Malaviya's first term as Congress President, at the session held in the year of the Morley-Minto reforms (the Indian Councils Act, 1909) and two years after the Surat split. B. Calcutta Session, 1911 → 3. Bishan Narayan Dar. The Lucknow lawyer presided at the session of 27 December 1911 at which 'Jana Gana Mana' was sung in public for the first time — the same December as the Delhi Durbar and the annulment of the partition of Bengal. C. Bankipore Session, 1912 → 2. Raghunath Narasinha Mudholkar. Bankipore, near Patna, was the venue in 1912; Mudholkar was a Moderate from Berar. D. Madras Session, 1914 → 4. Bhupendra Nath Bose. The Bengal Moderate presided at Madras in 1914, the year the First World War began. The economical route through the code table is to fix one pair and read the columns. The options print as four rows of numerals under an 'A B C D' header, and A takes only two values across them: 1 in options (a) and (b), 4 in options (c) and (d). Knowing that Malaviya presided at Lahore in 1909 kills half the paper at once. What then separates (a) from (b) is only the B and C columns — (a) says B-3, C-2 and (b) says B-2, C-3 — so a single further fact, either Dar at Calcutta or Mudholkar at Bankipore, decides the whole item. Two remembered pairs, not four, are enough.

• (b)A-1, B-2, C-3, D-4 — Gets A and D right but swaps the middle two: it puts Mudholkar at Calcutta 1911 and Bishan Narayan Dar at Bankipore 1912. The true order is the reverse — Dar 1911, Mudholkar 1912. This is the designed near-miss of the set, and it is why the item is really a test of one of those two middle pairs rather than of all four.
• (c)A-4, B-2, C-3, D-1 — Puts Bhupendra Nath Bose at Lahore 1909 and Malaviya at Madras 1914. Both are wrong: Bose presided at Madras in 1914 and Malaviya at Lahore in 1909. It also carries the same B-2, C-3 inversion as option (b).
• (d)A-4, B-3, C-2, D-1 — Has the middle pairs right — B-3 and C-2 — but reverses the two ends, giving Lahore 1909 to Bhupendra Nath Bose and Madras 1914 to Malaviya. It is the mirror image of the correct code at A and D, so a candidate who checked only the Calcutta and Bankipore rows and stopped would land here.

All four sessions in List I fall in the Moderate interlude between the Surat split of 1907 and the Lucknow session of 1916. With the Extremists out of the organisation, the presidency rotated among Moderate lawyers and legislators of the provincial elites — Malaviya from the United Provinces, Bishan Narayan Dar from Lucknow, Mudholkar from Berar, Bhupendra Nath Bose from Bengal. Reading the list this way makes it easier to hold: it is one political generation, not four unrelated names, and none of these presidents is a figure of the Gandhian era that a candidate is more likely to know.

Congress session–president–venue matching is a staple of every Indian competitive paper, and EPFO EO/AO prints it in the Match List I with List II form with a code table of four numeral rows. The habit it rewards is column reading: never try to verify four pairs when the code table lets one confident pair eliminate two options and a second pair finish the job.

• Lahore, 1909 — President: Madan Mohan Malaviya; the year of the Indian Councils Act (Morley-Minto reforms) and of separate electorates for Muslims.
• Calcutta, 1911 — President: Bishan Narayan Dar; 'Jana Gana Mana' was sung for the first time at this session on 27 December 1911.
• Bankipore (near Patna), 1912 — President: Raghunath Narasinha Mudholkar.
• Madras, 1914 — President: Bhupendra Nath Bose.
• All four sessions belong to the Moderate-dominated phase that followed the Surat split of 1907.
• Malaviya's presidencies were not confined to 1909 — he presided again at Delhi in 1918.
• December 1911 also saw the Delhi Durbar and the annulment of the 1905 partition of Bengal, which is a useful anchor for the Calcutta session's date.

• Trying to confirm all four pairs. The code table always allows elimination; two secure pairs are enough.
• Mixing up Bishan Narayan Dar (Calcutta 1911) with Mudholkar (Bankipore 1912) — the swap the options are built around.
• Confusing the Lahore session of 1909 with the far more famous Lahore session of 1929 under Jawaharlal Nehru.
• Assuming the president is always the most famous name in List II — in this window the presidents are Moderates, not the leaders a candidate remembers first.

EPFO EO/AO prints three Match List items in this paper, each with an A-B-C-D code table. On the history one the lists are almost always session-to-president, leader-to-organisation or movement-to-year. Learn sessions in clusters around a dated event and the matching becomes elimination rather than recall.

No directly related past PYQ was found.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  'Jana Gana Mana' was sung in public for the first time at which session of the Indian National Congress ?

  • (a)Bankipore Session, 1912
  • (b)Calcutta Session, 1911
  • (c)Lahore Session, 1909
  • (d)Madras Session, 1914

  Answer(b) Calcutta Session, 1911

• practice — not a real PYQ

  Madan Mohan Malaviya presided over the Indian National Congress for the first time at the session held at :

  • (a)Allahabad
  • (b)Bankipore
  • (c)Lahore
  • (d)Madras

  Answer(c) Lahore