SSC 2020 Previous Year GK Questions with Answers

The correct answer is A, Zoroastrianism. The Avesta, also called the Zend-Avesta, is the sacred book of the Zoroastrians, the followers of the prophet Zarathustra or Zoroaster of ancient Iran. It is written in Avestan, an old Iranian language close to the Sanskrit of the Rigveda, which is why the two texts share many words and gods. Its oldest and most respected part is the Gathas, the hymns held to be Zarathustra's own words. Zoroastrians worship Ahura Mazda, the lord of wisdom, keep a sacred fire burning in their temples and follow the rule of good thoughts, good words and good deeds. Their descendants in India are the Parsis, who reached Gujarat around the eighth century. B is wrong because the Buddhist canon is the Tripitaka, written in Pali. C is wrong because the Jain scriptures are the Agamas or Angas, in Prakrit. D is wrong because the sacred book of Judaism is the Torah, part of the Hebrew Bible. Exam tip: Avesta Zoroastrian, Tripitaka Buddhist, Agama Jain, Torah Jewish, Guru Granth Sahib Sikh.

The correct answer is A, 1951. The Constitution (First Amendment) Act was passed in 1951, a little over a year after the Constitution came into force.

It was enacted by the Provisional Parliament when Jawaharlal Nehru was Prime Minister, before the first general election. The amendment added the Ninth Schedule to protect land reform laws from judicial review, inserted Articles 31A and 31B, allowed the state to make special provision for the advancement of socially and educationally backward classes, and added public order, friendly relations with foreign states and incitement to an offence as grounds for restricting the freedom of speech under Article 19.

B is wrong: 1952 is the year of the first general election, not of the first amendment. C is wrong: 1950 is when the Constitution came into force, on 26 January. D is wrong: the Second and Third Amendments belong to 1952 and 1954.

Exam tip: First Amendment, 1951 - Ninth Schedule, Articles 31A and 31B, new limits on free speech.

The correct answer is D, 1982. The National Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development was set up on 12 July 1982.

NABARD was created by an Act of Parliament of 1981 on the recommendation of the Shivaraman Committee, formally the Committee to Review Arrangements for Institutional Credit for Agriculture and Rural Development, and it began work in July 1982. It is the apex refinance institution for agriculture, small industry, handicrafts and other rural activities, and its headquarters is in Mumbai. It supervises Regional Rural Banks and cooperative banks, runs the Rural Infrastructure Development Fund, and promotes the self-help group and bank linkage programme.

A is wrong: 1979 is not connected with NABARD. B is wrong: 1981 is the year the enabling Act was passed, not the year the bank started functioning. C is wrong: 1978 is too early for this institution.

Exam tip: NABARD - Act 1981, began 12 July 1982, Shivaraman Committee, headquarters Mumbai.

The correct answer is B, Majuli Island. Majuli, lying in the Brahmaputra in Assam, is the largest river island in the world. It was made India's first island district in 2016 and is the heart of Assamese Vaishnavite culture: Srimanta Sankardeva and his disciple Madhavdeva set up satras, or monastic centres, there, and the Raas Mahotsav is its best known festival. The island has been shrinking for decades as the Brahmaputra eats into its banks, which is why it is often in the news for erosion control. Option A is wrong because Srirangam, a river island on the Kaveri in Tamil Nadu famous for the Ranganathaswamy temple, is much smaller. Option C is wrong because Bhavani Island lies in the Krishna near Vijayawada in Andhra Pradesh. Option D is wrong because Agatti is a coral island of Lakshadweep in the Arabian Sea and not a river island at all. Exam tip: Majuli, on the Brahmaputra in Assam, is the largest river island and India's first island district.

The correct answer is A, Satyendra Prasad Sinha. Satyendra Prasad Sinha, later Lord Sinha of Raipur, was the first Indian appointed to the Viceroy's Executive Council, taking the post of Law Member under Lord Minto in 1909. He went on to become the first Indian raised to the British peerage and to sit in the House of Lords, served as Under-Secretary of State for India, and was the first Indian to govern a province as Governor of Bihar and Orissa. He also presided over the Bombay session of the Indian National Congress in 1915. His appointment came with the Indian Councils Act, 1909, the Morley-Minto Reforms, which enlarged the councils and brought in separate electorates. Option D is wrong because Syed Ali Imam followed Sinha as Law Member in 1910. Option B is wrong because Tej Bahadur Sapru became Law Member only in 1920. Option C is wrong because P. S. Sivaswami Iyer served on the Madras Executive Council. Exam tip: 1909 Morley-Minto brought the first Indian into the Viceroy's Executive Council.

The correct answer is D, Hubli. The South Western Railway zone has its headquarters at Hubballi, still widely written as Hubli, in Karnataka. The zone was carved out of the Southern and South Central Railways and began work on 1 April 2003; it runs the Hubballi, Bengaluru and Mysuru divisions and covers most of Karnataka with a little of Goa, Andhra Pradesh and Maharashtra. Option A is wrong because Chennai is the headquarters of Southern Railway, the first zone of independent India, formed in 1951. Option B is wrong because Secunderabad is the headquarters of South Central Railway. Option C is wrong because Kolkata is the headquarters of Eastern Railway and of Metro Railway, while South Eastern Railway sits at Garden Reach in the same city. Indian Railways is managed by the Railway Board, and the first train in India ran from Bori Bunder to Thane on 16 April 1853. Exam tip: Hubballi South Western, Jabalpur West Central, Bilaspur South East Central, Hajipur East Central, Bhubaneswar East Coast.

The correct answer is A, F1. F1 is the function key that opens Help in Windows and in almost every Microsoft Office program, which is why it is the first key on the row. The twelve function keys F1 to F12 sit along the top of the keyboard and each carries a standard job. F2 renames a selected file in Windows Explorer and moves the cursor into the edit line in Excel. F3 opens the search or find box in Explorer and in most browsers. F4 repeats the last action in Word and switches a cell reference between absolute and relative in Excel, while Alt + F4 closes the active window. F5 refreshes a web page and starts a slide show in PowerPoint. F7 runs the spelling and grammar check in Word. Options B, C and D are wrong because F2, F4 and F3 do the jobs described above and none of them opens Help. Exam tip: F1 Help, F2 rename, F3 search, F5 refresh, F7 spell check, F12 Save As.

The correct answer is A, Third battle of Panipat. Ahmad Shah Abdali, also called Ahmad Shah Durrani, defeated the Marathas in the Third Battle of Panipat on 14 January 1761. The Maratha army was led by Sadashivrao Bhau with the young Vishwasrao, while Abdali was joined by Najib-ud-Daula of the Rohillas and Shuja-ud-Daula of Awadh. The Marathas lost a whole generation of commanders, and the defeat ended their march towards supremacy in north India, clearing the field for the British. Option B is wrong because the Battle of Khanwa in 1527 was fought between Babur and Rana Sanga of Mewar. Option C is wrong because the Battle of Buxar in 1764 saw the English under Hector Munro beat the combined forces of Mir Qasim, Shuja-ud-Daula and Shah Alam II. Option D is wrong because the First Battle of Tarain in 1191 was won by Prithviraj Chauhan against Muhammad Ghori. Exam tip: Panipat 1526 Babur beat Ibrahim Lodi, 1556 Akbar beat Hemu, 1761 Abdali beat the Marathas.

The correct answer is D, 6 years or up to the age of 65 years, whichever is earlier. The Chief Election Commissioner holds office for six years from the date he takes charge, or until he turns sixty-five, whichever comes first; the other Election Commissioners serve on the same terms. The Constitution itself does not fix the term — Article 324 leaves the conditions of service to a law of Parliament, and the law sets these limits. The Chief Election Commissioner draws the salary of a Supreme Court judge and can be removed only in the same manner as a Supreme Court judge, while the other Election Commissioners can be removed only on his recommendation, which is what protects the Commission's independence. Options A, B and C are wrong because four, three and five years are not the prescribed term for this office. Exam tip: six years or sixty-five is also the limit for the Comptroller and Auditor General and for the Chairman of the Union Public Service Commission.

The correct answer is A, Access. DASD stands for Direct Access Storage Device. It is any storage device on which the read-write head can be sent straight to the place where a record is kept, so a file can be reached without passing over everything stored before it. Hard disk drives, floppy disks, CDs, DVDs and drums are direct access devices, and the term was coined by IBM for the disk units of its mainframes. The opposite is SASD, a sequential access storage device such as magnetic tape, where the tape must be wound past every earlier record. Direct access is what makes random reads and updates possible, which is why databases sit on disks and not on tape. Options B, C and D are wrong because Around, Accessible and Arithmetic do not appear in the expansion; Arithmetic belongs to ALU, the arithmetic logic unit of the CPU. Exam tip: DASD is disk and direct, SASD is tape and sequential.

The correct answer is B, Cotton. Cotton is a kharif crop: it is sown with the first showers of the south-west monsoon in June and July and picked from September onwards, because it needs high temperature, light rain and a long frost-free spell. Kharif crops are the monsoon crops and include rice, maize, jowar, bajra, ragi, arhar, moong, urad, groundnut, soybean and jute; the word kharif comes from the Arabic for autumn. Gujarat, Maharashtra and Telangana are the leading cotton states, and cotton grows best on the black regur soil of the Deccan. Options A and C are wrong because gram and pea are rabi pulses, sown from October to December and harvested in March and April. Option D is wrong because wheat is the main rabi cereal, which needs a cool growing season and warm ripening weather. Exam tip: cotton, rice and jute are kharif; wheat, gram, pea and mustard are rabi.

The correct answer is D, Odisha. The twin hills of Udayagiri and Khandagiri stand near Bhubaneswar and hold Jain rock-cut cells cut for monks in the first century BCE. The Hathigumpha or elephant cave on Udayagiri carries the inscription of the Chedi king Kharavela of Kalinga, the main source for his reign, and the Rani Gumpha is the largest and most decorated of the cells.

Option A, Uttarakhand, has the Kalsi rock edict and hill temples but no such cave group. Option B, Chhattisgarh, is associated with the Sitabenga and Jogimara caves of the Ramgarh hills, which are different sites. Option C, Tripura, is known for the rock carvings of Unakoti, again a separate site. Candidates often confuse Udayagiri in Odisha with the Udayagiri caves of Vidisha in Madhya Pradesh, which are Gupta period Vaishnavite caves with the Varaha panel.

The correct answer is D, Reserve Bank of India. Policy rates are announced by the Reserve Bank, and since 2016 the decision is taken by its Monetary Policy Committee of six members under the chairmanship of the Governor. The repo rate is the rate at which banks borrow short term funds from the Bank against government securities, and the reverse repo is the rate at which the Bank absorbs their surplus funds, so both are instruments of the central bank and not of any other body.

Option A, the Ministry of Finance, sets the inflation target in consultation with the Bank and appoints three members of the Committee, but it does not fix the rates. Option B, the State Bank of India, is a commercial bank that borrows at these rates. Option C, the Comptroller and Auditor General, audits government accounts and has no role in monetary policy at all.

The correct answer is D, Ctrl + F2. Ctrl together with F2 opens the print area of the Backstage view in Excel, Word and PowerPoint, where the page is shown exactly as it will be printed and the printer, copies, orientation and margins can be set. In Office 2003 and earlier the same combination opened the older Print Preview window.

Option A, Alt + Ctrl + F2, opens a file rather than previewing one, working like Ctrl + O. Option B, Alt + F2, was the Save As shortcut of very old Office versions and does nothing useful today; the modern Save As key is F12. Option C, Shift + F2, adds or edits a comment on the active cell in Excel, which is a completely different job. Learning the F2 family together helps: F2 alone edits the active cell, Shift + F2 handles a comment, Ctrl + F2 previews the print, and Alt + equals inserts a SUM.

The correct answer is B, Teller. ATM stands for Automated Teller Machine. A teller is the bank employee who takes and pays out cash at the counter, and the machine was built to do that same job without a person, which is how it got the name. The first ATM in India was installed by HSBC in Mumbai in 1987. Machines set up and run by non-bank companies, under the rules of the Reserve Bank, are called White Label ATMs, the first of which was Indicash, launched by Tata Communications in 2013. Option A is wrong because a transfer is a movement of money between accounts, not part of this abbreviation. Option C is wrong because a transaction is any banking entry, again not what the T stands for. Option D is wrong because trunk belongs to telephone terminology, such as trunk call. Exam tip: PIN means Personal Identification Number and ATM means Automated Teller Machine.

The correct answer is B, Gerusoppa. The Sharavati river in Karnataka falls from a height of about 253 metres as Jog Falls, which is also called Gerusoppa Falls after the village nearby, and Jogada Gundi in the local tongue. It is among the highest plunge waterfalls in India, and the water comes down in four separate streams named Raja, Rani, Roarer and Rocket. The Linganamakki dam upstream now controls the flow, so the falls are at their finest during the monsoon. Option A is wrong because Hogenakkal is on the Kaveri in Tamil Nadu, close to the Karnataka border. Option C is wrong because Soochipara, or Sentinel Rock falls, is on the Chaliyar in Wayanad, Kerala. Option D is wrong because Athirappilly is on the Chalakudy river in Kerala and is called the Niagara of India. Exam tip: the Sharavati makes Jog or Gerusoppa Falls in Karnataka, while the Kaveri makes Hogenakkal and Shivanasamudra.

The correct answer is C, 15. The Planning Commission divided India into 15 agro-climatic zones in 1989, so that farm planning could follow soil, climate, rainfall and water resources rather than State boundaries. The zones run from the Western Himalayan Region and the Trans-Gangetic Plains to the East Coast Plains and Hills, the Western Dry Region and the Islands Region. The idea was to match crops and cropping patterns to the land, and it is still the base on which farm research and extension work are planned. Option A is wrong because 20 is not the Planning Commission's figure. Option B is wrong because 10 is too few and matches no such classification. Option D is wrong because 30 confuses this division with the far larger number of agro-climatic sub-zones worked out by the ICAR. Exam tip: the Planning Commission marked 15 agro-climatic zones in 1989, while the ICAR uses 127 agro-climatic sub-zones.

The correct answer is C, Losar festival. Losar marks the Tibetan New Year and is kept for about a fortnight, usually in February or March, in Ladakh, Sikkim, Himachal Pradesh, Arunachal Pradesh and among Tibetan communities across India. In Tibetan, lo means year and sar means new. Homes are cleaned and decorated, butter lamps are lit, masked Cham dances are performed in the monasteries, and families eat guthuk, a noodle soup, to drive out the ill luck of the old year. Option A is wrong because Saga Dawa marks the birth, enlightenment and passing of the Buddha and falls in the fourth Tibetan month. Option B is wrong because Ongkor is a harvest festival held before the crops are cut. Option D is wrong because Shoton, the yoghurt festival of Lhasa, is known for Tibetan opera and the unveiling of a giant thangka. Exam tip: Losar is the Tibetan New Year; Saga Dawa marks the Buddha's birth and enlightenment.

The correct answer is C, President of India in consultation with senior judges of Supreme Court and High Court. Article 124(2) says the President appoints every judge of the Supreme Court after consulting such judges of the Supreme Court and of the High Courts as he thinks necessary, and that for a judge other than the Chief Justice the Chief Justice of India must always be consulted. In practice the collegium system now decides the name: the outgoing Chief Justice recommends the senior-most judge of the Supreme Court, and the Law Ministry places the recommendation before the President, who signs the warrant of appointment. Option A is wrong because judges only recommend; they do not appoint. Option B is wrong because the Prime Minister has no such power of his own. Option D is wrong because it leaves out the High Court judges whom Article 124(2) names. Exam tip: Article 124 covers the appointment of Supreme Court judges - the collegium recommends, the President appoints.

The correct answer is C, China. The Panchsheel agreement was signed on 29 April 1954 between India and China, as part of the treaty on trade between India and the Tibet region of China. Jawaharlal Nehru and Zhou Enlai gave it the name Panchsheel, the five principles: respect for each other's territorial integrity and sovereignty, non-aggression, non-interference in each other's internal affairs, equality and mutual benefit, and peaceful coexistence. The slogan Hindi-Chini bhai-bhai belongs to those years, and the five principles later shaped the Non-Aligned Movement. The war of 1962 showed how little the agreement held. Option A is wrong because India's main agreements with Pakistan are the Indus Waters Treaty of 1960 and the Simla Agreement of 1972. Option B is wrong because Bangladesh came into being only in 1971. Option D is wrong because the India-Nepal Treaty of Peace and Friendship was signed in 1950. Exam tip: Panchsheel - India and China, 29 April 1954, five principles.