Consider the following statements with reference to Trade Union Movement in India: 1. All India Trade Union Congress was founded in 1920. 2. Lala Lajpat Rai was elected its first President. 3. All India Trade Union Federation was formed by S. A. Dange in 1929. Select the correct answer from the code given below:
- (a)Only 1 & 2
- (b)Only 1 & 3
- (c)Only 2 & 3
- (d)Only 2 & 4
Correct — A, Only 1 & 2.
The All India Trade Union Congress was founded at Bombay on 31 October 1920, and Lala Lajpat Rai was elected president of that first conference, with Dewan Chaman Lall as its general secretary. Statements 1 and 2 both hold, so the code that fits is Only 1 & 2.
Statement 3 moves the wrong man onto the right body.
The breakaway was the moderates' work: at the AITUC's Nagpur session in 1929 the moderate wing under N. M. Joshi, with V. V. Giri, parted over cooperation with the Royal Commission on Labour and formed its own federation, called the Indian Trade Union Federation in some accounts.
S. A. Dange stood on the communist side of that quarrel, and from March 1929 he was an accused in the Meerut Conspiracy Case. Carry away the pairing: 1920 founding under Lajpat Rai, the 1929 breakaway under Joshi and Giri.
- (b)Only 1 & 3 — Statement 1 is sound, so this code turns wholly on statement 3 — and statement 3 hands the 1929 breakaway federation to S. A. Dange, when it was N. M. Joshi's and V. V. Giri's.
This code would be the key only on a version where the third statement named N. M. Joshi as a founder of the 1929 federation and the presidency clause named someone other than Lala Lajpat Rai.
- (c)Only 2 & 3 — This keeps the Dange attribution and throws away the 1920 date. That date is not in doubt: the founding conference met at Bombay on 31 October 1920, so rejecting statement 1 costs the mark on its own.
A true presidency clause paired with a true federation clause would key on a version of the item that misdated the AITUC's founding — to 1918, say, which is the year of the Madras Labour Union.
- (d)Only 2 & 4 — The stem numbers three statements, 1 to 3, and this code asks about a fourth. Statement 2 is indeed true, but statement 1 is true as well, so a code that leaves 1 out cannot carry the item.
Codes of this shape belong to a four-statement question, like the UPSC 2001 item that runs from the Arya Samaj to Vinoba Bhave across four numbered claims.
An all-India body for organised labour appeared in 1920, drawing together unions that had grown through the First World War years and the post-war price rise. That body was the All India Trade Union Congress.
Its founding leadership drew on nationalist politicians and moderate social workers, held together by the need for a single Indian voice on labour; communists became a force inside it through the decade that followed. An AITUC fact is safest read by asking which wing a name belongs to.
The AITUC sits where the national movement meets labour politics, so its founding names double as Congress names. Lala Lajpat Rai presided over its first session in the same year he presided over the Congress's special Calcutta session.
That overlap is also why its later history is a story of wings parting: a moderate strand around N. M. Joshi that worked through legislation and official committees, and a communist strand that included S. A. Dange.
- The All India Trade Union Congress was founded at Bombay on 31 October 1920, at a conference of delegates drawn from unions across the country.
- Lala Lajpat Rai was president of that founding conference and Dewan Chaman Lall its general secretary.
- The need for India to send a workers' delegate to the International Labour Organisation, set up in 1919, was among the spurs to forming an all-India body.
- N. M. Joshi led the AITUC's moderate wing and, with V. V. Giri, started the federation that broke away from it.
- That break came at the AITUC's Nagpur session in 1929, over cooperation with the Royal Commission on Labour; some accounts name the body the Indian Trade Union Federation.
- S. A. Dange was arrested in March 1929 and tried in the Meerut Conspiracy Case, whose judgment came in 1933.
- Lala Lajpat Rai died on 17 November 1928, less than three weeks after being injured in the lathi charge on the Simon Commission protest at Lahore.
- The Madras Labour Union, formed in 1918, is generally described as India's first organised trade union.
- The Trade Unions Act, 1926 provided for the registration of unions and gave registered unions legal protection.
Rows 1 and 2 carry statements 1 and 2 as printed; rows 4 and 5 are where statement 3's name goes wrong.
- Statement 3 keeps the body and the year plausible and swaps only the name, so a check that stops at 'a federation did come out of the AITUC around 1929' lets it through.
- Dewan Chaman Lall belongs to the same founding meeting as general secretary; letting his name stand in for the presidency turns a true statement 2 into a rejected one.
- S. A. Dange is a real name in 1920s labour politics, but on the communist side — which is what makes his appearance beside a moderates' federation look plausible.
- Option (d) carries the numeral 4 while the stem's list runs 1 to 3; picking a code by its numerals instead of by the statements is the hazard here.
- Lala Lajpat Rai died in November 1928, so any statement placing him at the head of an organisation formed in 1929 fails on the calendar alone.
It shows up as a statement-code item in which the organisation and the date are accurate and one name has been moved, so the question that decides the item is 'whose body was this?'.
It also appears as a one-line 'who founded' or 'who presided' question on the AITUC: the CDS 2020 (II) item asks who created the All India Trade Union Congress in 1920 and wants a single name.
CDS_GK_2020_II_Q162020Same body and same year: it asks who created the All India Trade Union Congress in 1920, where our item fixes the founding year and the first president. That one wants a single name; ours adds a second test, the ownership of the breakaway federation.
RPSC_2023_PRE_Prelims2023_Q1422023Same man, same year, a different chair — the Congress's special Calcutta session of September 1920, which passed the Non-Cooperation resolution, sits beside Lala Lajpat Rai's presidency of the AITUC's first conference. That item is party politics; ours is labour history.
CAPF_GAI_2025_Q512025Same device on different material: numbered statements each pairing an organisation with a year, a place and a first president, for the Depressed Classes bodies of the 1920s. The verification method matches ours; the subject matter is caste politics rather than trade unions.
UPSC_2001_GS1_Q812001Shares the numbered-statement code format and a Lala Lajpat Rai statement, but runs to four claims across social reform bodies — Arya Samaj, Brahmo Samaj, Sarvodaya Samaj — rather than three on the AITUC. It is also the shape of item that a code like 'Only 2 & 4' belongs to.
- practice — not a real PYQ
Who presided over the founding conference of the All India Trade Union Congress held at Bombay in 1920?
- (a)N. M. Joshi
- (b)Lala Lajpat Rai
- (c)Dewan Chaman Lall
- (d)S. A. Dange
Answerb — Lala Lajpat Rai was elected president of the AITUC's founding conference at Bombay in 1920.N. M. Joshi was central to organising the body but not the president of that session; Dewan Chaman Lall was its general secretary; S. A. Dange was a communist labour leader of the decade rather than the president of the first conference.
- practice — not a real PYQ
The federation formed when the AITUC's moderate wing broke away at the Nagpur session of 1929 was started by:
- (a)S. A. Dange
- (b)N. M. Joshi
- (c)B. T. Ranadive
- (d)Muzaffar Ahmed
Answerb — that federation was started by N. M. Joshi, with V. V. Giri, after the moderate, reform-through-legislation wing parted from the AITUC over cooperation with the Royal Commission on Labour.S. A. Dange, B. T. Ranadive and Muzaffar Ahmed belong to the communist side of labour and party politics in these years — that is the wing the moderates were breaking away from, not the wing that formed the federation.
- practice — not a real PYQ
The move to set up an all-India trade union body in 1920 was spurred by the need to:
- (a)name India's workers' delegate to the International Labour Organisation
- (b)register unions under the Trade Unions Act
- (c)carry out the recommendations of the Royal Commission on Labour
- (d)contest provincial elections under the Government of India Act, 1935
Answera — the International Labour Organisation was set up in 1919 and India had to send a workers' delegate to it, which called for an all-India union body to name one.The Trade Unions Act came in 1926, the Royal Commission on Labour was appointed at the end of the 1920s, and the Government of India Act was passed in 1935 — each of them later than the founding in 1920.