SSC Previous Year GK Questions with Answers

The correct answer is D, Hampi. Hampi on the Tungabhadra in Karnataka was the capital of the Vijayanagara empire, and its Virupaksha, Vittala and Hazara Rama temples are Dravidian work of the most elaborate kind: walled enclosures, towering gopurams, pillared kalyana mandapas, the famous stone chariot and the musical pillars. UNESCO inscribed the Group of Monuments at Hampi as a World Heritage Site.

Option A, Konark in Odisha, is the Sun Temple of the Eastern Ganga ruler Narasimhadeva I and belongs to the Kalinga branch of the Nagara style, not to Dravida. Option B, Bodh Gaya in Bihar, is a Buddhist site with the Mahabodhi temple and the Bodhi tree, and its tall brick tower follows a north Indian shrine form. Option C, Akshardham in Delhi, is a modern temple completed in this century and cannot represent a historical style.

The correct answer is D, Garbhagriha. The garbhagriha, the womb house, is the small square windowless cell that holds the image of the presiding deity. Every other part of a temple is added around it: the tower rises over it, the hall stands in front of it and the circumambulatory passage runs around it. A shrine can exist with nothing but a garbhagriha, which is why texts and examiners call it the nucleus of the temple.

Option A, the gopuram, is the gateway tower in the enclosure wall of a South Indian temple; it is often the tallest structure but it is an entrance, not the shrine. Option B, the mandapam, is the pillared hall where devotees assemble, and large temples have several of them. Option C, the pradakshina patha, is only the passage left for circumambulation around the sanctum. All three are important, yet none of them houses the deity.

The correct answer is D, Elephant. The Indian elephant, Elephas maximus indicus, was declared the National Heritage Animal in 2010 on the recommendation of the Elephant Task Force, so that its protection could be given the same weight as that of the tiger. The step went with Project Elephant, which works on elephant corridors and on reducing conflict between elephants and people.

Option A, the lion, was the National Animal of India until 1972 and survives in the wild only in the Gir forest of Gujarat, but it holds no heritage animal status. Option B, the horse, is not a national symbol at all, although a horse appears on the abacus of the State Emblem. Option C, the tiger, is the National Animal of India, adopted in 1972, and the distinction between National Animal and National Heritage Animal is exactly what this question tests.

The correct answer is C, 26 January 1950. The State Emblem of India was adopted on the day the Constitution came into force and the country became a Republic. It is adapted from the Lion Capital of Ashoka at Sarnath, with three of the four lions visible, a Dharma Chakra on the abacus flanked by a bull and a horse, and the motto Satyameva Jayate from the Mundaka Upanishad below it in Devanagari script.

Option A, 15 August 1947, is Independence Day and is the date candidates most often pick by mistake. Option B, 26 January 1959, is the right day of the year but the wrong year and is placed there to punish careless reading. Option D, 15 August 1952, matches neither event. Keep the pair apart: the National Flag was adopted on 22 July 1947 by the Constituent Assembly, while the emblem and the National Anthem belong to January 1950.

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 B, 1934. The Reserve Bank of India Act, 1934 is the statute that created the Bank and it carries the provisions on the custody and deployment of the country's foreign exchange reserves, which the Bank holds and invests. The day to day dealings of residents in foreign exchange are separately governed by the Foreign Exchange Management Act, 1999, which replaced the older regulation Act of 1973, but the Bank's own reserve management powers flow from its founding Act.

Option A, 1947, is the year of independence and of the earlier foreign exchange regulation law, which makes it tempting. Option C, 1923, is simply too early, as the Hilton Young Commission that recommended the Bank reported only in 1926. Option D, 1971, matches no relevant statute of the Reserve Bank.

The correct answer is C, Maharashtra. The Warli are a tribal community of the Palghar and Thane districts of northern Maharashtra, on the border of Gujarat. Their painting is made with a rice paste white on a wall coated with red ochre and cow dung, and it is built out of a few geometric units: the circle for the sun and moon, the triangle for mountains and trees, and the square for the sacred enclosure called the chauk. The commonest subject is the tarpa dance, a spiral of dancers around a musician. Jivya Soma Mashe was the artist who took Warli painting to the wider world.

Option A, Bihar, is the home of Madhubani. Option B, Kerala, is known for its temple murals. Option D, Assam, has manuscript painting of the Sattras, not Warli work.

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 D, Akkitham Achuthan Namboothiri. The Malayalam poet, known simply as Akkitham, received the 55th Jnanpith Award, given for the year 2019. He was the sixth Malayalam writer to be honoured, the language whose G. Sankara Kurup had won the very first Jnanpith for 1965.

Option A, Amitav Ghosh, won the 54th Jnanpith, for 2018, and was the first writer in English to receive it, English having become an eligible language only in 2013. Option B, Raghuveer Chaudhari, is a Gujarati novelist and poet who won the 51st award, for 2015. Option C, Chandrashekhara Kambara, is the Kannada playwright and poet who won the 53rd award, for 2017. All four are genuine Jnanpith laureates from consecutive years, which is what makes the question testing, and the safe way to answer it is to anchor one pair in memory, such as Amitav Ghosh with 2018, and count forward or back from there.

The correct answer is D, Akkitham Achuthan Namboothiri. The Malayalam poet, known simply as Akkitham, received the 55th Jnanpith Award, given for the year 2019. The Jnanpith is instituted by Bharatiya Jnanpith and is regarded as the highest literary award in India.

Option A, Amitav Ghosh, won the 54th Jnanpith, for 2018, and was the first writer in English to receive it, English having become an eligible language in 2013. Option B, Raghuveer Chaudhari, is the Gujarati novelist who won the 51st award, for 2015. Option C, Chandrashekhara Kambara, is the Kannada playwright and poet who won the 53rd award, for 2017. All four are real laureates from nearby years, so the safe method is to anchor one pair, such as Amitav Ghosh with 2018, and count from there. Note also that the numbered award and the year of the award go together, while the announcement usually falls in a later calendar year.

The correct answer is D, 11. A hockey side fields eleven players at a time, one of whom is the goalkeeper, and the other ten are spread across defence, midfield and attack. Substitutes wait off the field and may be sent on and taken off any number of times while play goes on, which is called rolling substitution, but the count on the field never rises above eleven unless the umpire has to be told otherwise.

Option A, 10, is the number a team is left with after a player is sent off with a yellow or a red card, not the normal count. Option B, 16, is the size of the full squad a team names for a tournament such as the Olympics, of whom eleven take the field. Option C, 12, is the number in a kho kho team, of whom nine enter the field. Cricket and football also field eleven players each, which is why such a question often lists several eleven player games together.

The correct answer is C, Balbir Singh Dosanjh, the hockey centre forward known as Balbir Singh Sr. He won Olympic gold with India in 1948, 1952 and 1956, scored five goals in the 1952 final against the Netherlands, and in 1957 became the first sportsperson of any game to be given the Padma Shri, which opened the civilian honours to sport.

Option A, Manpreet Singh, is a much later player who captained the team to the bronze medal at the Tokyo Olympics in 2020. Option B, Milkha Singh, the athlete called the Flying Sikh, did receive the Padma Shri, but after Balbir Singh Sr and for athletics, not hockey. Option D, Dhanraj Pillay, was a celebrated forward of the 1990s and 2000s and was honoured much later still, so none of the three came first.

The correct answer is A, Ctrl + K. With a word or a phrase selected, Ctrl + K opens the Insert Hyperlink dialog box, where the selected text can be linked to a web address, to another file, to a place inside the same document such as a heading or a bookmark, or to an email address. The same command sits in the Links group of the Insert tab, and the linked text is then shown underlined and coloured.

Option B, Ctrl + M, increases the left indent of the paragraph by one tab stop, and Ctrl + Shift + M reduces it again. Option C, Ctrl + H, opens the Find and Replace dialog box at its Replace tab, used to change one word into another throughout the document. Option D, Ctrl + Z, undoes the last action carried out, and Ctrl + Y repeats or redoes it. None of these three creates a link.

The correct answer is A, Mother Teresa. She was born at Skopje, came to India as a nun, took Indian citizenship in 1948 and founded the Missionaries of Charity at Kolkata in 1950. The Nobel Peace Prize was given to her in 1979 for her work among the poorest of the poor, and she remains the only woman from India to have received it.

Option B, Nargis Dutt, was a film actress who was given the Padma Shri and was later a member of the Rajya Sabha, but she was never a Nobel laureate. Option C, Indira Gandhi, was Prime Minister of India and received the Bharat Ratna in 1971; no Indian Prime Minister has won the Nobel Peace Prize. Option D, Sarojini Naidu, called the Nightingale of India, was the first woman President of the Indian National Congress and the first woman Governor of a state, but she too won no Nobel Prize.

The correct answer is C, Tanvi Shah. She sang the Spanish lines of Jai Ho from Slumdog Millionaire and also wrote them, and when the song won the Grammy for Best Song Written for Visual Media in 2010 she became the first Indian woman to win a Grammy award. A. R. Rahman won two Grammy awards at the same ceremony for the music of the film.

Option A, Monali Thakur, is a playback singer who won the National Film Award for Best Female Playback Singer, an Indian honour and not a Grammy. Option B, Neeti Mohan, is a singer who came to notice through a television talent show and has sung for many Hindi films, but she has not won a Grammy. Option D, Palak Muchhal, is a playback singer known as much for her charity work for children with heart ailments. None of the three has won this award.

The correct answer is A, Bhanu Athaiya. She won the Academy Award for Best Costume Design in 1983 for Richard Attenborough's film Gandhi, sharing the award with John Mollo, and became the first Indian of any kind to receive an Oscar. She had begun her career with the film CID and designed costumes for more than a hundred Hindi films.

Option B, Satyajit Ray, is the answer most candidates choose wrongly. His Academy Award of 1992 was an honorary one for lifetime achievement, given nine years after Athaiya's win and in the year of his death. Option C, A. R. Rahman, won two Oscars in 2009 for Slumdog Millionaire, for the original score and for the song Jai Ho. Option D, Resul Pookutty, won the award for sound mixing for the same film in the same year, so both are much later than 1983.

The correct answer is D, Dinaras. Gupta gold coins were called dinaras, a name borrowed from the Roman denarius that had already reached India through trade and through Kushana coinage. The Guptas struck more gold coins than any other ancient Indian dynasty, and their types, such as the Archer, the Ashvamedha and the Lyrist, are a major source for the dynasty's history.

Option A, rupaka, was the Gupta silver coin, introduced by Chandragupta II after he defeated the Shaka Kshatrapas and took over their silver currency zone in western India. Option B, tanka, was the silver coin of the Delhi Sultanate, standardised by Iltutmish in the thirteenth century. Option C, drama or dramma, was a silver coin used by several post-Gupta and early medieval dynasties of western and central India, and was never the Gupta gold denomination.

The correct answer is D, Gupta Dynasty. Gupta imperial rule is conventionally dated from about 320 CE, the epoch of the Gupta era that begins with the accession of Chandragupta I, and it faded out by about 550 CE after the Huna invasions. Those two dates are the ones textbooks attach to the dynasty, which is why the question frames the period as 320 to 550 AD.

Option A, the Mauryan dynasty, is far older and ruled from about 322 BCE to 185 BCE. Option B, the Hoysala dynasty, was a later Karnataka power of the eleventh to fourteenth centuries, famous for the temples at Belur and Halebidu. Option C, the Magadha dynasty, is not a dynasty at all but a region and kingdom in south Bihar; its ruling houses were the Haryankas, Shishunagas, Nandas and Mauryas, each of which held power centuries before 320 CE.

The correct answer is B, Rs. 30,000 crore. The Union Budget 2021-22 proposed raising the corpus of the Contingency Fund of India from five hundred crore rupees to thirty thousand crore rupees, and the change was carried through the Finance Bill of that year. The fund is constituted under Article 267, is held at the disposal of the President, and is used to meet urgent unforeseen expenditure pending authorisation by Parliament, after which it is recouped.

Option A, fifteen thousand crore, option C, twenty-five thousand crore, and option D, ten thousand crore, are all lower than the amount actually provided. The point worth remembering beyond the number is the reason for the increase: the corpus had remained unchanged for decades while the size of the budget had grown many times over, leaving too little room for genuine emergencies.

The correct answer is C, 6.8. The budget estimate for the fiscal deficit of the central government in 2021-22 was placed at 6.8 per cent of gross domestic product. The figure was unusually high because the budget followed the pandemic year, when revenue had collapsed and expenditure on relief had risen sharply, and the government set out a glide path to bring the deficit below 4.5 per cent of GDP by 2025-26.

Option A, 5.1 per cent, is far below the level announced for that year and reflects no budget estimate of the period. Option B, 7.6 per cent, and option D, 7.2 per cent, are both higher than the 2021-22 estimate; the revised estimate for the preceding pandemic year, 2020-21, was in fact placed even higher, near 9.5 per cent, which is the figure candidates often confuse with this one.