SSC Previous Year GK Questions with Answers

The correct answer is D, 1878. The Vernacular Press Act was passed in 1878, when Lord Lytton was Viceroy of India.

The Act was aimed at Indian-language newspapers, which had grown sharply critical of British rule after the famine of 1876-78. It allowed a magistrate to demand a bond from a printer or publisher, and to seize the press if seditious matter appeared. Because English papers were left untouched, it was nicknamed the 'Gagging Act'. Surendranath Banerjea and others protested strongly, and the Amrita Bazar Patrika switched overnight from Bengali to English to escape it. Lord Ripon repealed the Act in 1882.

A is wrong: 1876 is the year of the Royal Titles Act, which made Queen Victoria Empress of India. B is wrong: no press law was passed in 1874. C is wrong: 1872 saw the first non-synchronous all-India census, not a press law.

Exam tip: Vernacular Press Act - passed by Lytton in 1878, repealed by Ripon in 1882.

The correct answer is D, Pacific Ocean. El Nino is the warming of surface water in the central and eastern equatorial Pacific.

In a normal year the trade winds push warm water westwards towards Australia and Indonesia, and cold water rises along the coast of Peru and Ecuador. In an El Nino year the trade winds weaken, warm water spreads back eastwards and the cold upwelling off South America is cut off, which hurts the anchovy catch there. The name means 'the child' in Spanish, because fishermen noticed it around Christmas. For India an El Nino year often means a weaker monsoon; the opposite phase, with colder than normal Pacific water, is called La Nina.

A is wrong: the Arctic Ocean is polar and has no such cycle. B is wrong: the Indian Ocean has its own Indian Ocean Dipole, not El Nino. C is wrong: the Atlantic has a much weaker Atlantic Nino.

Exam tip: El Nino - warm Pacific, weak Indian monsoon; La Nina - cold Pacific, usually a good monsoon.

The correct answer is B, Article 324. This article vests the superintendence, direction and control of elections in the Election Commission of India.

Article 324 falls in Part XV of the Constitution, which covers elections. The Commission handles elections to Parliament, to the state legislatures, and to the offices of President and Vice President; elections to panchayats and municipalities are conducted by State Election Commissions under Articles 243K and 243ZA. The Election Commission began as a single-member body on 25 January 1950 and the Chief Election Commissioner and other Election Commissioners hold a fixed tenure fixed by law.

A is wrong: Article 356 provides for President's rule in a state. C is wrong: Article 352 deals with the proclamation of a National Emergency. D is wrong: Article 101 lists the grounds on which a seat in Parliament becomes vacant.

Exam tip: Article 324 - Election Commission; Articles 243K and 243ZA - State Election Commissions.

The correct answer is B, 5. The Vice President of India holds office for a term of five years from the date of entering upon the office.

Articles 63 to 71 deal with the Vice President. The Vice President is elected by an electoral college made up of the members of both Houses of Parliament, including the nominated members, by proportional representation through the single transferable vote and by secret ballot. State legislatures take no part, unlike in the President's election. The Vice President is the ex officio Chairman of the Rajya Sabha, may resign by writing to the President, and can be removed by a resolution passed by a majority of all the then members of the Rajya Sabha and agreed to by the Lok Sabha.

A is wrong: six years is the term of a member of the Rajya Sabha. C and D are wrong: two and three years match no term fixed for this office.

Exam tip: President and Vice President both serve five-year terms; Articles 52-62 for the President, 63-71 for the Vice President.

The correct answer is D, Swaran Singh Committee. The Fundamental Duties were added on the recommendation of this committee, set up in 1976.

The Swaran Singh Committee suggested that the Constitution should spell out the duties of citizens alongside their rights. Acting on it, the 42nd Constitutional Amendment Act, 1976 inserted Part IVA with a single article, Article 51A, listing ten Fundamental Duties. An eleventh duty, that a parent or guardian should provide education to a child between six and fourteen years, was added by the 86th Amendment Act, 2002. The duties are not by themselves enforceable in a court.

A is wrong: the Raja Chelliah Committee reported on tax reforms in the early 1990s. B is wrong: the Santhanam Committee of 1962 dealt with prevention of corruption and led to the Central Vigilance Commission. C is wrong: the Kelkar Committee also worked on direct and indirect tax reform.

Exam tip: Swaran Singh Committee to 42nd Amendment, 1976 to Part IVA, Article 51A, ten duties; the eleventh came in 2002.

The correct answer is D, He was the founder of Brahmo Samaj. This statement is incorrect, because the Brahmo Samaj was founded by Raja Ram Mohan Roy at Calcutta in 1828.

Swami Dayanand Saraswati was born in 1824 as Mool Shankar at Tankara in the Morbi region of present-day Gujarat. He founded the Arya Samaj at Bombay in 1875 and gave the call 'Back to the Vedas'. He attacked idol worship, caste rigidity and child marriage, and supported widow remarriage, women's education and the Shuddhi movement.

A states a true fact, so it is not the answer: he wrote 'Satyarth Prakash' in Hindi in 1875, and it remains the main text of the Arya Samaj. B is also true: the Arya Samaj was his creation. C is true as well, because Tankara, his birthplace, lies in Gujarat.

Exam tip: Arya Samaj - Dayanand Saraswati, 1875; Brahmo Samaj - Ram Mohan Roy, 1828.

The correct answer is A, Communication of all decisions of the Council of Ministers to the Governor. Article 167 lists the duties of the Chief Minister towards the Governor.

Under Article 167 the Chief Minister must communicate to the Governor every decision of the Council of Ministers about the administration of the state and about proposals for legislation, must furnish any information on these matters that the Governor calls for, and must place before the Council any matter on which a single Minister has taken a decision but the Council has not considered. It is the state counterpart of Article 78, which lays down the same duties for the Prime Minister towards the President.

B is wrong: Ministers are appointed and removed by the Governor under Article 164, on the Chief Minister's advice. C is wrong: the Speaker is elected by the members of the Legislative Assembly under Article 178. D is wrong: the Advocate General is appointed by the Governor under Article 165.

Exam tip: Article 78 - Prime Minister's duties; Article 167 - Chief Minister's duties.

The correct answer is C, Gobind Behari Lal. He was the first person of Indian origin to win the Pulitzer Prize, sharing the award for reporting in 1937.

Gobind Behari Lal was born in Delhi in 1889 and went to the United States in 1912 as a student, where he also worked with the Ghadar movement in California. He became science editor of the Hearst newspaper group and shared the 1937 Pulitzer Prize for Reporting for his coverage of the science meetings held during Harvard University's tercentenary, explaining new research in language ordinary readers could follow.

A is wrong: Geeta Anand shared a Pulitzer much later, in 2003, for reporting in an American newspaper. B is wrong: Siddhartha Mukherjee won the Pulitzer Prize for General Non-Fiction in 2011 for his book on cancer, 'The Emperor of All Maladies'. D is wrong: Jhumpa Lahiri won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 2000 for 'Interpreter of Maladies'.

Exam tip: Gobind Behari Lal - first Indian-origin Pulitzer winner, 1937, in the Reporting category.

The correct answer is B, Ctrl + 3. Pressing Ctrl + 3 turns the contents of the selected cell or range italic in Microsoft Excel, and pressing it again removes the italics; Ctrl + I does exactly the same job. Excel keeps a whole set of number-key shortcuts for formatting, which is worth learning as a block: Ctrl + 1 opens the Format Cells dialog box, Ctrl + 2 applies or removes bold, Ctrl + 4 underlines, Ctrl + 5 strikes a line through the text, Ctrl + 8 shows or hides outline symbols and Ctrl + 9 hides the selected rows. Option A is wrong because Ctrl + 4 applies underline, not italics. Option D is wrong because Ctrl + 2 applies bold. Option C is wrong because Ctrl + 6 switches the display of objects on the sheet on and off. Exam tip: in Excel remember the run Ctrl + 1 Format Cells, Ctrl + 2 bold, Ctrl + 3 italic, Ctrl + 4 underline and Ctrl + 5 strikethrough.

The correct answer is A, Bihar. Kabartal Wetland, known locally as Kanwar Jheel, lies in Begusarai district of Bihar and was designated a Ramsar site in 2020, becoming the first Ramsar site in the state. It is an oxbow lake left behind by the shifting course of the Burhi Gandak in the Indo-Gangetic plain, spreads over about 2,600 hectares, and works as a natural flood buffer for the area. It is an important halt on the Central Asian Flyway, where migratory birds such as the greylag goose and the endangered sociable lapwing have been recorded. Option B is wrong because Himachal Pradesh's Ramsar sites are Renuka, Pong Dam Lake and Chandertal. Option C is wrong because Punjab's include Harike, Kanjli, Ropar, Nangal, Beas Conservation Reserve and Keshopur-Miani. Option D is wrong because Haryana's Sultanpur and Bhindawas were both named in 2021. Exam tip: Kanwar Jheel or Kabartal in Begusarai is Bihar's first Ramsar site, an oxbow lake of the Burhi Gandak.

The correct answer is B, Pulicat. Pulicat Lake lies across the boundary of Andhra Pradesh and Tamil Nadu, with the larger share in Andhra Pradesh, and is the second largest brackish-water lagoon in India after Chilika. A long barrier island, Sriharikota, separates it from the Bay of Bengal, and that island holds the Satish Dhawan Space Centre from which ISRO launches its rockets. The lagoon is fed by the Arani, Kalangi and Swarnamukhi rivers and the Pulicat Bird Sanctuary on its shores draws flamingoes and pelicans. Option A is wrong because Dal is a freshwater lake in Srinagar, Jammu and Kashmir. Option C is wrong because Loktak, with its floating phumdis and the Keibul Lamjao National Park, is in Manipur. Option D is wrong because Sambhar, India's largest inland salt lake, lies in Rajasthan. Exam tip: Chilika in Odisha is India's largest brackish lagoon and Pulicat the second, with Sriharikota on it.

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 C, The Panchayats. Part IX of the Constitution of India is headed 'The Panchayats'. It was inserted by the 73rd Constitutional Amendment Act, 1992, which came into force on 24 April 1993, now marked as National Panchayati Raj Day, and it runs from Article 243 to Article 243-O. Part IX gives panchayats a three-tier structure at village, intermediate and district level, a fixed term of five years, reservation of seats for Scheduled Castes, Scheduled Tribes and women, a State Election Commission to hold their elections and a State Finance Commission to review their funds; the Eleventh Schedule lists the subjects handed to them. Option A is wrong because relations between the Union and the States form Part XI. Option B is wrong because the Scheduled and Tribal Areas are in Part X, read with the Fifth and Sixth Schedules. Option D is wrong because finance, property, contracts and suits make up Part XII. Exam tip: Part IX Panchayats with the Eleventh Schedule, Part IX-A Municipalities with the Twelfth.

The correct answer is B, September - October. Kharif crops are the monsoon crops: they are sown with the onset of the south-west monsoon in June and July and harvested in September and October, when the rains withdraw. They need heat and plenty of water, and the group includes rice, maize, jowar, bajra, ragi, arhar, moong, urad, cotton, jute, groundnut and soybean. The rabi season follows, with sowing from October to December and harvesting in March and April — wheat, barley, gram, peas, mustard and linseed. Between the two comes the short zaid season from March to June, which gives watermelon, muskmelon, cucumber and fodder crops. Option A is wrong because July and August are the growing months of the kharif crop, not the harvest. Option C is wrong because March and April are when rabi crops are cut. Option D is wrong because January and February fall in the middle of the rabi season. Exam tip: kharif sown June-July and cut September-October; rabi sown October-December and cut March-April.

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, 32. An IPv4 address, which is what the question means by an IP address, is thirty-two bits long. It is written in dotted-decimal form as four numbers separated by full stops, and each number stands for eight bits, or one octet, so it can run only from 0 to 255 — for example 192.168.1.1. Thirty-two bits give about 4.3 billion possible addresses, and because these began to run out, IPv6 was designed with 128-bit addresses written in hexadecimal. Every IPv4 address has a network part and a host part, separated by the subnet mask, and the addresses fall in classes A to E. Option B is wrong because 24 bits is the length of the manufacturer's OUI prefix in a MAC address. Option C is wrong because 16 bits is the size of a port number. Option D is wrong because 12 bits is not the length of any address. Exam tip: IPv4 is 32 bits, a MAC address 48 bits and IPv6 128 bits.

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 C, Taxes on lands and buildings. Taxes on lands and buildings is entry 49 of the State List, so it is not in the Concurrent List. The Seventh Schedule divides law-making power into three lists: the Union List for Parliament alone, the State List for the state legislatures, and the Concurrent List on which both may legislate, with the Union law prevailing in a clash under Article 254. Option B is wrong because forests is in the Concurrent List — it was moved there from the State List by the 42nd Amendment Act, 1976, along with education, weights and measures, administration of justice and the protection of wild animals and birds. Option A is wrong because industrial and labour disputes is entry 22 of the Concurrent List. Option D is wrong because economic and social planning is entry 20 of the same list. Exam tip: taxation entries sit almost entirely in the Union or State List; stamp duties is the one notable tax entry in the Concurrent List.

The correct answer is B, United States of America. The Fundamental Rights in Part III of the Indian Constitution were drawn from the Bill of Rights, the name given to the first ten amendments to the Constitution of the United States. Along with them, India borrowed judicial review, the independence of the judiciary, the impeachment of the President, the removal of judges of the Supreme Court and High Courts, and the office of the Vice-President from the American model. Option A is wrong because Canada gave a federation with a strong Centre, the vesting of residuary powers in the Union, the appointment of Governors by the Centre and the advisory jurisdiction of the Supreme Court. Option C is wrong because Ireland gave the Directive Principles of State Policy, the nomination of members to the Rajya Sabha and the method of electing the President. Option D is wrong because Australia gave the Concurrent List, freedom of trade and commerce, and joint sittings of the two Houses. Exam tip: Bill of Rights from the USA, Directive Principles from Ireland, Emergency provisions from Germany.