IBPS GK Questions 2026

Commutation changes the nature of the punishment itself, substituting a lighter kind for the one awarded, so that a death sentence becomes imprisonment for life or rigorous imprisonment becomes simple imprisonment.

Article 161 confines the Governor's power to offences against laws on matters to which the state's executive power extends, and it does not extend to pardoning a death sentence, which under Article 72 belongs to the President alone; a Governor also cannot touch a sentence passed by a court martial.

It empowers the President to grant pardon, reprieve, respite, remission, suspension or commutation of punishment in cases of a sentence by court martial, offences against laws on matters within the Union's executive power, and all cases of a sentence of death.

Under Article 111 the President may return a bill for reconsideration only if it is not a Money Bill; for a Money Bill the choice is confined to giving assent or withholding it.

The bill, which would have allowed the interception of postal articles, was neither assented to nor returned by President Zail Singh, who simply kept it pending, and it lapsed; this is the standing Indian illustration of a pocket veto.

A qualified veto is one that the legislature can override only by a special higher majority, such as two-thirds; it belongs to the American President and not to the Indian one, because when the Indian President returns a bill a simple majority in both Houses is enough to compel assent.

The arithmetic is worth learning. Article 85 requires that six months shall not intervene between the last sitting of one session and the first sitting of the next, so the longest an ordinance can run before Parliament reassembles is six months; Article 123 then allows it six weeks more from…

An ordinance must be laid before both Houses when Parliament reassembles, and it ceases to operate on the expiry of six weeks from the date of reassembly, or earlier if both Houses pass resolutions disapproving it.

It empowers the President to promulgate an ordinance when Parliament, or either House of it, is not in session and the President is satisfied that circumstances exist which make immediate action necessary; such an ordinance has the same force and effect as an Act of Parliament.

Concluded in 1975 under the auspices of the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific, it was renamed the Asia-Pacific Trade Agreement in 2005 and its members are India, Bangladesh, China, South Korea, Sri Lanka, Laos and Mongolia.

SAFTA was signed at the twelfth SAARC summit held in Islamabad in January 2004 and came into force on 1 January 2006, replacing the earlier and far weaker South Asian Preferential Trading Arrangement of 1995.

Rules of origin test whether a product really originates with the partner, usually by requiring a change in its tariff classification there together with a minimum share of value added in that country.

Article 7.1 of TEPA commits the EFTA states to increase foreign direct investment in India by 50 billion US dollars in the first ten years and a further 50 billion in the following five years, a total of 100 billion over fifteen years, with the stated aim of generating one…

The India-Australia Economic Cooperation and Trade Agreement, abbreviated ECTA, was signed in April 2022 and came into force in December 2022 as an interim step towards a wider comprehensive agreement.

A customs union removes duties on trade among its members and, in addition, requires every member to levy the same tariff on goods coming from outside the union, which is the common external tariff.

At the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership summit held in Bangkok in November 2019, India announced that it would not join the agreement.

The India-UAE Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement was signed on 18 February 2022 and came into force on 1 May 2022, a gap of barely ten weeks that makes it one of the fastest agreements India has brought into operation.

The India-Mauritius Comprehensive Economic Cooperation and Partnership Agreement, or CECPA, took effect in 2021 and is the first trade agreement India concluded with any African country.

The European Free Trade Association has exactly four members today: Iceland, Liechtenstein, Norway and Switzerland. Denmark was among the seven countries that set up EFTA in 1960, but it left to join the European Communities and is today a member of the European Union, not of EFTA.

TEPA was signed on 10 March 2024 in New Delhi with the four EFTA states, Iceland, Liechtenstein, Norway and Switzerland, and came into force on 1 October 2025.