Important Days & Dates Previous Year Questions (PYQ) with Answers

The correct answer is D, 25 January. National Voters' Day is observed on 25 January every year because the Election Commission of India was set up on 25 January 1950, a day before the Constitution came into force. The day has been observed since 2011 to encourage citizens who have turned eighteen to enrol as voters, and new electors are handed their Elector Photo Identity Cards at functions held in polling-station areas, each year under a chosen theme. Option A is wrong because 26 March is not an Indian observance of this kind; it is the independence day of Bangladesh. Option B is wrong because 24 February is marked in India as Central Excise Day. Option C is wrong because 27 December is remembered as the day Jana Gana Mana was first sung, at the Calcutta session of the Congress in 1911. Exam tip: the Election Commission was founded on 25 January 1950, so National Voters' Day falls a day before Republic Day.

The correct answer is B, Allahabad. The fourth session of the Indian National Congress met at Allahabad in 1888 and elected George Yule as its president, and he was the first Englishman and the first non Indian to hold the office. Yule was a Calcutta businessman and a former president of the Bengal Chamber of Commerce, and his election was meant to show that the Congress was not a body of one community alone. Option A, Calcutta, hosted the second session of 1886 under Dadabhai Naoroji. Option C, Madras, hosted the third session of 1887 under Badruddin Tyabji, the first Muslim president of the Congress. Option D, Bombay, hosted the very first session of December 1885 under Womesh Chandra Bonnerjee, and is the option most often chosen by mistake because it is the city students associate with the early Congress.

The correct answer is A, Yoga for the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals. The second International Day of Yoga fell in 2016, the year after the first observance of 2015, and the theme tied yoga to the Sustainable Development Goals that the United Nations had adopted in 2015, with the main event held at Chandigarh. Options B, C and D are themes of the kind announced in other years or simply invented for the question, and they are meant to attract a candidate who remembers only that the themes speak of peace, wellness or health. The lesson for the examination hall is to count the editions: the first day was in 2015, so the second was in 2016, and the theme must belong to that year. The day itself is observed on 21 June, following the General Assembly resolution of 2014 on India’s proposal.

The correct answer is B, 2019. Mahatma Gandhi was born on 2 October 1869 at Porbandar in Gujarat, so his 150th birth anniversary fell on 2 October 2019. The Government of India marked it with two years of celebrations from 2018 to 2020, and the Swachh Bharat Mission set its target of an open-defecation-free India for that date. The United Nations observes 2 October as the International Day of Non-Violence, adopted in 2007. Gandhi Jayanti is one of India's three national holidays, along with Republic Day on 26 January and Independence Day on 15 August. A is wrong because 2018 was the 149th anniversary and only the start of the celebrations. C is wrong because 2020 was the 151st anniversary. D is wrong because 2021 was the 152nd. Exam tip: Gandhi born 2 October 1869; 150th anniversary in 2019; 2 October = International Day of Non-Violence.

The correct answer is C, Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel. National Unity Day, or Rashtriya Ekta Diwas, is observed on 31 October, the birth anniversary of Sardar Patel, who was born in 1875 at Nadiad, Gujarat. The day was started in 2014 to honour his role as the first Deputy Prime Minister and Home Minister who brought more than 560 princely states into the Indian Union, earning him the title Iron Man of India. It is marked with a Run for Unity and a unity pledge, and on 31 October 2018 the 182-metre Statue of Unity was unveiled in his memory at Kevadia on the Narmada. A is wrong because Dr Ambedkar's birth anniversary, 14 April, is Ambedkar Jayanti. B is wrong because Indira Gandhi's birthday, 19 November, is observed as National Integration Day. D is wrong because Mother Teresa was born on 26 August, which is not a national day. Exam tip: 31 October means Sardar Patel, National Unity Day and the Statue of Unity.

The correct answer is D, 1929. The Great Depression began with the crash of the New York stock market in October 1929, remembered through Black Thursday and Black Tuesday of that month. Banks failed, industrial output collapsed and unemployment rose across the United States and Europe through the early 1930s; the recovery in America came with Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal from 1933. A is wrong because 1911 is associated with the Chinese Revolution, not with any economic collapse. B is wrong because 1931 falls in the depth of the Depression but is two years after it began, and this is the option that catches candidates who remember only that the worst years were in the early thirties. C is wrong because 1914 is the year the First World War started.

The correct answer is B, 1919. The Treaty of Versailles was signed on 28 June 1919 in the Hall of Mirrors at the Palace of Versailles and formally ended the First World War between Germany and the Allied powers. It placed the guilt for the war on Germany, imposed heavy reparations, cut its territory and limited its army, and the resentment it created is treated by historians as one cause of the Second World War. A is wrong because 1921 saw separate agreements between the United States and Germany, as the American Senate had refused to ratify Versailles. C is wrong because 1933 is the year Hitler became Chancellor of Germany, a consequence of the post-war settlement rather than part of it. D is wrong because 1940 falls in the middle of the Second World War, twenty-one years after the treaty.

The correct answer is B, 1799. Napoleon Bonaparte seized power in November 1799 in the coup that overthrew the Directory, and he became First Consul of France, which is the point at which the French Revolution is usually said to have ended; he crowned himself emperor five years later, in 1804. A is wrong because 1797 is the year of the Treaty of Campo Formio, which ended his first Italian campaign but gave him no political office in Paris. C is wrong because by 1800 he was already in power and fought the battle of Marengo as First Consul. D is wrong because in 1798 he was away in Egypt, where his fleet was destroyed by Nelson at the Battle of the Nile, and he returned from that campaign only in 1799. The chain worth keeping is 1789 revolution, 1799 Napoleon in power, 1804 emperor, 1815 Waterloo.

The correct answer is D, Faizpur. The fiftieth session of the Indian National Congress met in December 1936 at Faizpur in the Khandesh region of what is now Maharashtra, and it was the first session of the Congress held in a village rather than in a city. Jawaharlal Nehru presided, and the choice of a rural venue was deliberate, marking the Congress decision to take its programme of agrarian reform to the peasantry before the provincial elections held under the Government of India Act of 1935. Option A, Karumadi, is a village in Kerala known for the Karumadikkuttan statue of the Buddha. Option B, Punnapra, also in Kerala, is remembered for the Punnapra Vayalar uprising of 1946. Option C, Rampur, is a district town of Uttar Pradesh and hosted no such session; all three are placed here only because they sound like villages.

The correct answer is D, 26 November. The Constituent Assembly adopted the Constitution of India on 26 November 1949, and the Government of India declared that date Constitution Day, or Samvidhan Divas, in 2015, the year of the 125th birth anniversary of Dr B. R. Ambedkar, who chaired the Drafting Committee. Until then the day was marked quietly as National Law Day. The Constitution came into force two months later, on 26 January 1950, which is kept as Republic Day, though a few articles on citizenship, elections and provisional arrangements took effect on the day of adoption itself. A is wrong because 2 October is Gandhi Jayanti, also the International Day of Non-Violence. B is wrong because 30 November carries no such national observance. C is wrong because 15 October, the birthday of Dr A. P. J. Abdul Kalam, is kept as World Students' Day. Exam tip: adopted 26 November 1949, Constitution Day; enforced 26 January 1950, Republic Day.

The correct answer is A, The fission bomb dropped at Hiroshima. Little Boy was the code name of the uranium fission bomb dropped by the United States on the Japanese city of Hiroshima on 6 August 1945, the first use of a nuclear weapon in war. Three days later, on 9 August, a plutonium bomb named Fat Man was dropped on Nagasaki, and Japan surrendered shortly afterwards. B is wrong because the bomb dropped at Nagasaki was Fat Man, and it was a fission bomb as well, not a fusion or hydrogen bomb, which came only in the 1950s. C is wrong because the first nuclear device tested by the United States was code-named Trinity and was exploded in New Mexico in July 1945. D is wrong because North Korea's first nuclear test came decades later and has no connection with these code names.

The correct answer is B, 1938. Subhash Chandra Bose was elected president of the Indian National Congress at the Haripura session in Gujarat in 1938, where he set up a National Planning Committee under Jawaharlal Nehru. He was elected a second time at Tripuri in 1939, defeating Pattabhi Sitaramayya, but resigned in April of that year after losing the confidence of the working committee, and went on to found the Forward Bloc. Option A, 1932, is the year of the Communal Award and the Poona Pact and has no connection with his presidency. Option C, 1941, is the year Bose escaped from house arrest in Calcutta and made his way to Germany. Option D, 1943, is the year he took charge of the Indian National Army at Singapore and proclaimed the Azad Hind government, which is the fact most often confused with the presidency.

The correct answer is C, Waterloo. Napoleon Bonaparte was finally defeated on 18 June 1815 at Waterloo in present-day Belgium by the allied armies led by the Duke of Wellington and the Prussian commander Blucher. The defeat ended the Hundred Days that followed his return from exile on Elba, and he was sent to the remote island of Saint Helena, where he died in 1821; the phrase to meet one's Waterloo comes from this battle. A is wrong because at Ligny, fought two days before Waterloo, Napoleon actually beat the Prussians. B is wrong because Jena in 1806 was one of his greatest victories, in which Prussia was crushed. D is wrong because Arcole in 1796 was an early victory in his Italian campaign that helped make his reputation.

The correct answer is A, 1889. The Eiffel Tower was completed in Paris in 1889, a hundred years after the storming of the Bastille in 1789, and it served as the entrance arch of the World's Fair held that year to mark the centenary of the French Revolution. Designed by Gustave Eiffel's firm, it was meant to stand for twenty years and remained the tallest structure in the world for about four decades. B is wrong because 1900 was another Paris exposition year but the tower was already eleven years old by then. C is wrong because 1886 is the year the Statue of Liberty, also linked to Gustave Eiffel through its internal framework, was dedicated in New York, which is why the year is offered here. D is wrong because 1913 falls just before the First World War and carries no connection with the tower.

The correct answer is D, Nagpur. The annual session of the Indian National Congress in December 1920 met at Nagpur under the presidency of C. Vijayaraghavachariar, and it confirmed the programme of non cooperation that a special session at Calcutta had approved in September of that year. The Nagpur session also changed the creed of the Congress from constitutional means to attaining swaraj by all legitimate and peaceful means, and reorganised the party on linguistic provinces with a working committee. Option A, Thiruvananthapuram, never hosted a session of this period. Option B, Mumbai, then Bombay, hosted the first session of 1885 and the Quit India session of August 1942, not the 1920 session. Option C, Tripura, is a confusion with Tripuri in the Central Provinces, where the session of 1939 was held and where the Subhash Chandra Bose crisis came to a head.

The correct answer is D, C A B D. Taking the four in the order they appear in history: Wood's Despatch came first, in 1854, and is called the Magna Carta of English education in India because it laid down a graded system of schools and universities. The Hunter Commission, also known as the Indian Education Commission, followed in 1882 under W. W. Hunter and reported mainly on primary and secondary education. The Saddler Commission, or Calcutta University Commission, sat in 1917 and 1919 and reviewed university education. The Sargent Plan, prepared by the Central Advisory Board of Education in 1944, was the last of the four and proposed universal free elementary education within forty years. Options A and C both place the Hunter Commission first, which is wrong because Wood's Despatch of 1854 precedes it, and option B puts the Saddler Commission before the Hunter Commission, reversing 1882 and 1917.