NEW DELHI: The Congress may have a surprise trick up its sleeve for the coming general elections, if workers, like citizens, vote with their feet. Nearly 10 years of UPA rule seems to have changed the loyalties of workers as the Grand Old Party's trade union INTUC has claimed a ten-fold rise in its membership between 2002 and 2013.

From a membership base of 38,92,000 in 2002, the Indian National Trade Union Congress has now claimed that it has 3.33 crore members in its submission to the Central Labour Commissioner's office. If these numbers, which would now be subjected to scrutiny and verification, hold true, it could make the Congress' union the country's largest employee representative body, displacing the BhartiyaJanata Party's trade union arm, the BhartiyaMazdoorSabha (BMS) -which has led trade union rankings over the last two decades. The BMS, on its part,has also claimed a significant jump in its member base, from62lakh in 2002 to 1.71 crore in 2013. The Communist Party of India's trade union All India Trade Union Congress (AITUC) has also staked claim on a larger membership over the past decade from 33.42 lakh to 1.42 crore.

Both these unions' claims, however, pale in comparison to the INTUC's submission. The last time there was a headcount of trade union members' allegiances, the AITUC had displaced the Communist Party of India (Marxist)'s union called CITU, to become the third largest union in the country. This time around, CITU has claimed that its membership has more than doubled from 26.77 lakh in 2002 to around 57 lakh. The Hind MazdoorSabha, one of the few apolitical unions in the country, has claimed that membership has nearly tripled from32.22 lakh in 2002 to 92 lakh in 2013. The HMS is in charge of the union at India's largest employer - the Indian Railways.

HMS' All India Railwaymen's Federation, is well known for its unprecedented Railways strike in the 1970s spearheaded by George Fernandes. Taken together, submissions by around ten central trade unions indicate that their membership base has crossed 10 crore.

Speaking on conditions of anonymity, senior union leaders expressed surprised at this surge in membership claims. "The world over, trade unions are facing such a decline that their relevance is under threat. But Indian unions are claiming that their followers have grown fivefold from2.48 crore in 2002 to over 10 crore in 2013. This is hard to believe," said the general secretary of one of the top five unions. Among the smaller unions, the Dravida Munnetra Kazagham's LPF has claimed a membership of 19 lakh, while Sewa, which represents women's self-help groups, has submitted membership numbers of 17 lakh. The Trinamool Congress' union is learnt to have avoided getting their membership numbers vetted in this round.

The advisor of one of the smaller unions told ET: "Most unions, unlike us, present highly inflated membership claims — as high as twice or thrice their actual numbers.

This is to take advantage of the faulty verification system in place,which helps those who inflate numbers." Trade unions place a lot of importance to their membership rankings as their bargaining power with the government as well as in tripartite negotiations is linked to the strength of the numbers they represent.