SSC 2019 Previous Year GK Questions with Answers

The correct answer is D, alluvial. A delta is built out of silt that a river carries down and drops where it meets the sea, so deltaic land is alluvial by definition, and the eastern coastal deltas of the Mahanadi, Godavari, Krishna and Kaveri are among the most fertile rice tracts of the country. Option A is wrong because black soil is a residual soil formed in place by the weathering of the Deccan lava and is found on the plateau, not in the deltas, although the same rivers flow across it upstream. Option B is wrong because arid soil belongs to the dry west, chiefly western Rajasthan, where rainfall is low and the soil is sandy and saline. Option C is wrong because forest soil forms on hill slopes and in valleys under a cover of trees, not on a coastal plain.

The correct answer is C, a hospice. A khanqah was the hospice or lodge where a Sufi master lived with his disciples, taught, held assemblies of devotional music and fed whoever came to the door, whatever their faith or caste. It was the working centre of a silsila, and the Chishti khanqahs at Ajmer, Delhi and Ajodhan drew visitors of every background, which is why they mattered so much to the social history of the Sultanate period. Option A and option D are wrong because the words for heaven and hell in this vocabulary are jannat and jahannum, not khanqah. Option B is wrong because the tomb of a Sufi saint is called a dargah, and the death anniversary observed there is the urs. Students should also remember jamaat khana for a larger community hall and sama for the musical assembly held inside the khanqah.

The correct answer is B, silver. Silver is an element, a pure metal with its own place in the periodic table, so it cannot be an alloy; an alloy is a homogeneous mixture of two or more metals, or of a metal with a non-metal such as carbon. Option A, solder, is an alloy of lead and tin, valued for its low melting point when joining electrical wires. Option C, bronze, is an alloy of copper and tin, the metal that gave its name to an age of human history. Option D, brass, is an alloy of copper and zinc, used for utensils, fittings and musical instruments. The trap here is German silver, which contains copper, zinc and nickel and no silver at all, so it is an alloy despite its name, while silver itself is not.

The correct answer is Three times. A National Emergency under Article 352 has been proclaimed three times: in October 1962, when China attacked India; in December 1971, during the war with Pakistan that led to the creation of Bangladesh; and in June 1975, on the ground of "internal disturbance", during Indira Gandhi's government. The first two were external emergencies; the third was the only internal emergency India has had.

The 1975 proclamation came while the 1971 emergency was still in force, so for about two years two emergencies ran side by side; both were revoked in March 1977. That overlap is why "two times" sometimes tempts candidates who think of periods rather than proclamations. "Four times" and "only once" have no basis. Note that the count refers only to National Emergencies: President's Rule under Article 356 has been imposed on States many times, and a Financial Emergency under Article 360 has never been declared.

The correct answer is A, Nagaland. Moatsu is a festival of the Ao tribe of Nagaland, kept in the first week of May once the fields have been cleared, the seed sown and the seedlings planted. It marks the end of that hard stretch of work and the start of a short rest before the rains, and it runs for about three days with singing, dancing, rice beer and roasted meat. Its best-known part is Sangpangtu, when men and women in their finest dress sit around a large fire and food and drink are shared. It is one of the two chief Ao festivals, the other being Tsungremmong in August. B is wrong because Tripura is known for Garia Puja and Kharchi Puja. C is wrong because Assam is known for Bihu, tied to the harvest and the Assamese new year. D is wrong because West Bengal is known for Durga Puja and Poila Boishakh. Exam tip: Moatsu belongs to the Ao tribe of Nagaland and falls in early May; the Hornbill Festival is the state's December event.

The correct answer is D, Karnataka. Hampi stands on the south bank of the Tungabhadra river in the Vijayanagara district of Karnataka, and it was the capital of the Vijayanagara empire founded by Harihara and Bukka in 1336. At its height in the sixteenth century under Krishnadeva Raya it was among the largest cities in the world; the Persian envoy Abdur Razzaq and the Portuguese traveller Domingo Paes both wrote of its crowded bazaars and its ring of fortifications. The city was sacked after the battle of Talikota in 1565 and never recovered. Its ruins, including the Virupaksha temple and the Vittala temple with its stone chariot and musical pillars, were made a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1986. A is wrong because Tamil Nadu holds the great Chola temples instead. B is wrong because Kerala lay outside the Vijayanagara heartland. C is wrong because the medieval capital in Telangana was Warangal of the Kakatiyas. Exam tip: Hampi is on the Tungabhadra in Karnataka, a UNESCO site since 1986.

The correct answer is D, Chhau. Chhau was inscribed on UNESCO's Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity in 2010. It is a masked dance-drama of eastern India with three styles named after their homes: Seraikella in Jharkhand and Purulia in West Bengal, where masks are worn, and Mayurbhanj in Odisha, where the dancers perform without masks. The form grew out of martial training, so its steps imitate combat and the movements of birds and animals, while its stories come from the Ramayana, the Mahabharata and local legend. It is danced at the spring festival of Chaitra Parva to the beat of the dhol and the dhumsa. A is wrong because Fugdi is a women's folk dance of Goa. B is wrong because Jhoomar belongs to Punjab. C is wrong because Dalkhai is a folk dance of western Odisha. Exam tip: Indian entries on the UNESCO list include Chhau (2010), Ramlila, Kutiyattam, Vedic chanting and Sankirtana.

The correct answer is D, Odisha. Bali Yatra is held on the bank of the Mahanadi at Cuttack on Kartik Purnima and remembers the days when merchants of Kalinga sailed to Bali, Java and Sumatra. People float small boats of paper, banana bark or cork with lamps in them, and a very large trade fair runs beside the river for a week.

Option A, Tamil Nadu, had its own sea trade under the Cholas, who actually sent naval expeditions to Srivijaya, but its festival calendar has Pongal and the temple festivals, not Bali Yatra. Option B, Rajasthan, is a landlocked state whose big gatherings are the Pushkar Fair and the Desert Festival of Jaisalmer. Option C, Kerala, has Onam and Thrissur Pooram. The word Yatra and the Kalinga sea link should point the candidate to Odisha at once.

The correct answer is C, Parushni. In the Rigveda the Ravi appears as the Parushni, and it is on this river that the Battle of the Ten Kings, the Dasarajna, is placed. Option A is wrong because Askini, also written Asikni, is the Vedic name of the Chenab, which is formed by the Chandra and Bhaga streams and is also called the Chandrabhaga. Option B is wrong because Shutudri is the Vedic name of the Sutlej, the river that enters India through the Shipki La pass. Option D is wrong because Kalindi is an old name of the Yamuna, which rises at the Yamunotri glacier and joins the Ganga at Prayagraj. The remaining pairs to memorise are the Jhelum as the Vitasta and the Beas as the Vipasha, since papers often ask all six Punjab rivers in one matching question.

The correct answer is B, smog. A primary pollutant is released directly from a source, while a secondary pollutant is formed in the atmosphere when primary pollutants react. Photochemical smog is formed when sunlight acts on nitrogen oxides and volatile organic compounds to produce ozone and other irritants, so it is the classic secondary pollutant, and ground level ozone is counted with it. Option A is wrong because carbon monoxide comes straight out of an engine or a stove when fuel burns without enough oxygen. Option C is wrong because carbon dioxide is released directly by combustion and respiration. Option D is wrong because fly ash is the fine particulate matter that leaves the chimney of a thermal power station and is emitted as it is. The same distinction applies to acid rain, where sulphuric and nitric acids are secondary products formed from the primary gases sulphur dioxide and nitrogen oxides.

The correct answer is C, Export Security. Export security is not a recognised category of trade barrier; it is not a device that restricts the movement of goods across a border. Option A is wrong as a choice because subsidies are treated as a barrier: by lowering the cost of domestic producers they make imported goods uncompetitive, and the World Trade Organization disciplines them for that reason. Option B is wrong because an embargo is the strongest of all barriers, an outright ban on trade with a particular country or in a particular good. Option D is wrong because tariff barriers, chiefly customs duty, are the classic barrier, raising the price of the imported good in the home market. Keep the two families apart: tariff barriers act on price, while non-tariff barriers such as quotas, embargoes, licensing and standards act on quantity or on entry itself.

The correct answer is D, Nilgiri. Doddabetta, about 2,637 metres high, is the highest point of the Nilgiri hills, the block where the Western Ghats and the Eastern Ghats meet, and it overlooks the hill station of Udhagamandalam or Ooty in Tamil Nadu. Option A is wrong because the highest point of the Vindhyan range is a far lower summit in Madhya Pradesh; the Vindhyas form the northern edge of the Deccan, not a two-thousand-metre range. Option B is wrong because the highest peak of the Satpura range is Dhupgarh in the Pachmarhi hills, about 1,350 metres. Option C is wrong because the highest peak of the Aravallis is Guru Shikhar near Mount Abu in Rajasthan, about 1,722 metres. Examiners often mix these four peaks in one question, so learn the set together: Doddabetta with the Nilgiris, Dhupgarh with the Satpuras and Guru Shikhar with the Aravallis.

The correct answer is D, Gujarat. Gujarat has the longest coastline of any Indian state. Its shore runs from the Rann of Kachchh round the Gulf of Kachchh, along the whole Saurashtra or Kathiawar peninsula and down the Gulf of Khambhat, and this deeply indented outline gives it far more shore than any other state. Option A is wrong because Karnataka has a short Kanara coast of only a few hundred kilometres between Goa and Kerala. Option B is wrong because Kerala, though famous for its Malabar coast and backwaters, is a narrow state whose coastline is much shorter than Gujarat's. Option C is wrong because Tamil Nadu, with the Coromandel coast, has one of the longer coastlines on the eastern side but still less than Gujarat. Remember that nine states of India touch the sea, and that Gujarat leads the list.

The correct answer is Harilal Kania. Justice Harilal Jekisundas Kania, who had been the last Chief Justice of the Federal Court, became the first Chief Justice of India when the Supreme Court began on 26 January 1950, and presided over its inauguration on 28 January. He died in office in November 1951 and was succeeded by M. Patanjali Sastri.

The other options are also Chief Justices, which is exactly why they appear. B.K. Mukherjea and A.K. Sarkar became Chief Justice later, in the 1950s and 1960s. Y.V. Chandrachud is the longest-serving Chief Justice, from 1978 to 1985, and a favourite answer to a different question. To keep the Supreme Court firsts together: first Chief Justice H.J. Kania; first woman judge M. Fathima Beevi (1989); longest-serving Chief Justice Y.V. Chandrachud. The present Chief Justice, Justice Surya Kant, is the 53rd, and took office in November 2025.

The correct answer is A, Left atrium. The left atrium is the chamber that receives oxygen-rich blood coming back from the lungs through the pulmonary veins. From there the blood passes the bicuspid or mitral valve into the left ventricle, which pumps it out through the aorta to the whole body. The right side of the heart handles the used blood: the right atrium takes oxygen-poor blood from the body through the vena cava, and the right ventricle sends it on to the lungs through the pulmonary artery. The left ventricle has the thickest wall of the four chambers because it must push blood the farthest. B is wrong because the right ventricle pumps blood to the lungs instead of receiving it from them. C is wrong because the left ventricle gets that blood next, from the left atrium, not straight from the lungs. D is wrong because the right atrium receives deoxygenated blood. Exam tip: pulmonary veins carry oxygen-rich blood to the left atrium, and the pulmonary artery is the one artery carrying oxygen-poor blood.

The correct answer is D, 100 Rupee Note. The motif of Rani ki Vav appears on the back of the 100 rupee note of the Mahatma Gandhi New Series, which the Reserve Bank of India issued in 2018 in a lavender shade. Rani ki Vav is an eleventh-century stepwell at Patan in Gujarat, built by Queen Udayamati in memory of the Solanki king Bhimdev I. It goes down seven storeys, and its walls carry more than five hundred large sculptures, many of them of the avatars of Vishnu. UNESCO placed it on the World Heritage list in 2014. A is wrong because the 50 rupee note shows the stone chariot of Hampi. B is wrong because the 10 rupee note shows the Sun Temple at Konark. C is wrong because the 200 rupee note shows the Sanchi Stupa. Exam tip: 10 Konark, 50 Hampi, 100 Rani ki Vav, 200 Sanchi, 500 Red Fort.

The correct answer is B, 16. A debit card carries a 16-digit card number printed on its front, and this is the number a shop or a website reads to route the payment. The digits are not random. The first six form the Bank Identification Number, which names the card network and the bank that issued the card; the next nine identify the customer's account with that bank; and the last one is a check digit worked out by the Luhn formula, so a mistyped number is caught at once. RuPay, Visa and Mastercard debit cards issued in India all follow this pattern, usually printed in four groups of four. A is wrong because 15 digits belong to American Express cards, which are charge and credit cards. C and D are wrong because 14 and 17 digits do not match the pattern used for debit cards. Exam tip: 16 digits, the first six the BIN, the last one a Luhn check digit, and the three-digit CVV on the back.

The correct answer is B, Neuron. Dendrites and the axon are the two kinds of processes that grow out of a neuron, the nerve cell that carries messages through the body. The cell body, also called the cyton, holds the nucleus. Dendrites are short branched fibres that pick up a signal and carry it towards the cell body, while the axon is a single long fibre that carries the signal away towards the next cell. The gap between the axon of one neuron and the dendrite of the next is the synapse, where a chemical crosses over. A neuron is the longest cell in the human body. A is wrong because a mature human red blood cell is a disc without a nucleus and only carries oxygen. C is wrong because the nephron is the filtering unit of the kidney, made of many cells, not a cell itself. D is wrong because white blood cells fight infection and move by changing shape. Exam tip: dendrite brings the signal in, axon takes it out, synapse joins two neurons.

The correct answer is C, Salem - Tamil Nadu. The Salem Steel Plant lies in Salem district of Tamil Nadu, so this is the only correctly matched pair. It is a SAIL unit set up in 1981 and is known for stainless steel cold-rolled coils and sheets rather than ordinary construction steel. The other three pairs name the wrong state. A is wrong because the Bokaro Steel Plant, built with Soviet help in the 1960s, stands in Jharkhand, which was carved out of Bihar in 2000. B is wrong because the Durgapur Steel Plant, built with British help, is in West Bengal and not in Odisha. D is wrong because the Rourkela Steel Plant, India's first public sector integrated plant and built with West German help, is in Odisha and not in West Bengal. Exam tip: Rourkela-Germany-Odisha, Durgapur-Britain-West Bengal, Bhilai-Russia-Chhattisgarh, Bokaro-Russia-Jharkhand.

The correct answer is B, Small intestine. The small intestine is the longest part of the human alimentary canal, about 6 to 7 metres in an adult, which is why it is called the longest organ of the digestive system. It has three parts, the duodenum, the jejunum and the ileum, and its inner wall is folded into millions of finger-like villi. These villi give it a huge surface area, so digestion is completed and almost all the nutrients are absorbed here. Bile from the liver and enzymes from the pancreas empty into the duodenum and break down fat, starch and protein. A is wrong because the pancreatic duct is only a narrow tube a few centimetres long. C is wrong because the large intestine is about 1.5 metres, shorter though wider, and mainly absorbs water and salts. D is wrong because the oesophagus is roughly 25 centimetres. Exam tip: small intestine about 6-7 m and longest, large intestine about 1.5 m and widest.