In this question, two statements A and B have been given. They may be related…

Concept: In 'statement and effect' reasoning items, the task is to work out how two given statements relate: whether one statement supplies the reason, motive, or triggering event that explains why the other statement's event took place, whether the two are unrelated independent occurrences, or whether both plausibly stem from some further, unstated circumstance. The direction of a cause-effect link is fixed by asking which statement furnishes the reason that accounts for the other.

Application: Statement B reports that the group needs funds to conduct its annual meeting programme in the last week of January - a stated funding requirement. Statement A reports that the group's leader asked members to contribute ₹2,000 before January 19 - a concrete fundraising instruction with a deadline. January 19 falls before the last week of January, so the collection window closes in time for the funds to be available when the meeting is held. A specific monetary ask timed to close before an event is the ordinary way an organisation meets a funding requirement it already has, so the need described in Statement B accounts for the action described in Statement A.

Cross-check (why the other options do not fit):

• Statement A as the cause and Statement B as the effect would require the contribution call itself to bring about a need for the meeting - but a fundraising request responds to an existing need rather than creating one, so this reversed direction does not fit.

• Both statements as independent causes would require the collection call and the meeting's funding requirement to be unconnected developments - but they concern the same organisation and the same time frame, so they are not unrelated.

• Both statements as effects of a common cause would require some further, unstated development to have produced both the collection call and the funding requirement - but the funding requirement in Statement B is already accounted for directly by the upcoming annual meeting, so no additional external cause is needed.

Result: The dependency runs from the stated need (Statement B) to the action taken to meet it (Statement A): Statement B is the cause and Statement A is the effect.