SSC Previous Year GK Questions with Answers

The correct answer is A, the Union Budget 2021-22. It was the first union budget in India not to be printed. The customary halwa ceremony that marks the start of printing was replaced, and the documents were made available to members of Parliament and to the public in electronic form through a dedicated Union Budget mobile application and the budget website.

Option B, the 2019-20 budget, is remembered instead for the briefcase being replaced by a red cloth ledger, but the documents were still printed. Option C, the 2020-21 budget, was presented before the change and is known for the longest budget speech delivered in Parliament. Option D, the 2018-19 budget, was the first full budget after the rollout of the goods and services tax, and again was a printed budget.

The correct answer is B, 97.2 percent. Textbooks describing the distribution of water on earth give about 97.2 per cent as ocean water, roughly 2 per cent locked in ice caps and glaciers, and well under 1 per cent as groundwater, lakes, rivers, soil moisture and water vapour together. This is why fresh water is described as a scarce resource even though the planet looks blue from space.

Option A, 94 per cent, option C, 90.2 per cent, and option D, 92.2 per cent, are all too low and would leave an impossibly large share of the planet's water as fresh water. The safe way to remember the set is that the oceans take a little over 97 per cent, the frozen ice sheets of Antarctica and Greenland take most of what is left, and everything that human beings actually use comes out of the small remainder.

The correct answer is A, the Pacific. The Ring of Fire is a horseshoe-shaped belt running around the rim of the Pacific Ocean, from the Andes up the west coast of the Americas, across the Aleutians and down through Japan, the Philippines and Indonesia to New Zealand. It holds the majority of the world's active volcanoes and is the source of most large earthquakes, because it follows the lines along which oceanic plates are being subducted.

Option B, the Indian Ocean, does have the seismic Sunda arc on its eastern edge, but that arc is counted as part of the Pacific ring and the ocean as a whole has no such belt. Option C, the Atlantic, is widening rather than closing, so its activity is concentrated along the Mid-Atlantic Ridge and is mostly gentle. Option D, the Arctic, is tectonically quiet apart from the slow spreading ridge that continues from the Atlantic.

The correct answer is B, Peru. El Nino, Spanish for the child, is the warm surface water that appears off the coast of Peru and Ecuador around Christmas in some years, replacing the normally cold Peru or Humboldt current. When it develops strongly the trade winds weaken, the anchovy catch collapses because nutrient-rich cold water stops rising, and Indian monsoon rainfall tends to be below normal.

Option A, Colombia, faces both the Pacific and the Caribbean but lies too close to the equator and is not the coast the phenomenon is named for. Option C, Chile, is washed by the same cold Peru current further south, yet the warming is described and measured off Peru and Ecuador. Option D, Bolivia, is a landlocked country in South America with no sea coast at all, so no ocean current can run along it.

The correct answer is D, Agenda 21. The United Nations Conference on Environment and Development, popularly called the Earth Summit, met at Rio de Janeiro in 1992 and adopted Agenda 21, a detailed non-binding programme of action for sustainable development. The number refers to the twenty-first century, for which the programme was drawn up, and its chapters cover poverty, consumption patterns, health, human settlements, atmosphere, oceans, waste and the role of major groups.

Options A, B and C, Agenda 39, Agenda 19 and Agenda 22, name no document at all and are included only to test whether the candidate remembers the number. The way to keep it straight is to link the twenty-one to the century that was about to begin, and to remember that the same summit also produced the Rio Declaration, the Forest Principles and the two conventions on climate change and biological diversity.

The correct answer is A, Nahapana. Nahapana belonged to the Kshaharata family of the Shakas, the Western Kshatrapas who ruled in western India, and not to the Kushanas at all. He is remembered because the Satavahana king Gautamiputra Satakarni defeated him and restruck his silver coins, a hoard of which was found at Jogalthembi in Maharashtra.

Option B, Vasishka, was a Kushana ruler of the family of Kanishka and is known from inscriptions of the line. Option C, Vasudeva, was the last important Kushana king, whose coins and devotion to Shiva mark the Indianisation of the dynasty; he should not be confused with Vasudeva the founder of the Kanva dynasty. Option D, Huvishka, ruled between Kanishka and Vasudeva and is known from a large coinage and from the Mat shrine near Mathura.

The correct answer is B, neither I nor II, which means that both the pairs given are correct and none of them is wrong. In the Koeppen classification as applied to India, the semi-arid steppe climate marked BShw covers parts of Punjab, Haryana, western Uttar Pradesh and the drier interior of the peninsula, where rainfall is low but not as low as in a true desert. The monsoon type with a dry summer, marked As, covers the Coromandel coast of Tamil Nadu, which stays dry in the south-west monsoon months and receives its rain from the retreating monsoon in winter.

Options A and C each reject one of the two correct pairs, and option D rejects both. The trap lies in expecting every statement in such a question to contain an error.

The correct answer is B, the monsoon trough. The monsoon trough is the belt of low pressure that lies across the northern plains during the rainy season and guides the depressions that bring rain. As the sun appears to move south of the equator after the September equinox, the land cools, the low pressure weakens and the trough is replaced by high pressure. That retreat of the trough is what is called the withdrawal or retreat of the monsoon, and it begins from north-west India in early September.

Option A, an upper level trough, belongs to the upper air circulation and is not the feature described here. Option C, a lee trough, forms on the sheltered side of a mountain and is a local feature. Option D, an inverted trough, is a name used for a monsoon trough that extends into the Bay of Bengal in a particular shape, not the plains feature that weakens in October.

The correct answer is A, global warming. Carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas: it lets in the short wave radiation of the sun but absorbs a part of the long wave infrared radiation that the warmed earth sends back, and radiates it downwards again. As its concentration rises with the burning of coal, oil and gas and with deforestation, more heat is held in the lower atmosphere and the average surface temperature of the earth rises. That rise is global warming, and it is the central driver of present day climate change.

Option B, air pressure, depends on temperature, altitude and the mass of air above a place, not on the share of a trace gas. Option C, conservation, is the protection and wise use of resources and is a human activity, not a consequence. Option D, rains, may change in pattern as the climate warms, but that is an indirect effect rather than the direct result asked for here.

The correct answer is Sardar Vallabhai Patel. Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel was India's first Deputy Prime Minister and Home Minister, from 1947 until his death in 1950. He is remembered above all for integrating more than 500 princely states into the Indian Union, which earned him the title "Iron Man of India"; the 182-metre Statue of Unity in Gujarat honours him. The post of Deputy Prime Minister is not mentioned in the Constitution; it is a political arrangement, and the holder is sworn in simply as a minister.

The other three options also served as Deputy Prime Minister later, which is exactly why the question asks for the first. Morarji Desai was Deputy Prime Minister under Indira Gandhi from 1967 to 1969. Charan Singh and Jagjivan Ram both became Deputy Prime Ministers in 1979 in Morarji Desai's Janata government. Charan Singh then went on to become Prime Minister himself later that year.

The correct answer is Morarji Desai. Pakistan conferred its highest civilian award, the Nishan-e-Pakistan, on Morarji Desai in 1990, and India awarded him the Bharat Ratna in 1991. He is the only Prime Minister to have received the highest civilian honours of both countries. As Prime Minister from 1977 to 1979, heading the Janata Party government, he was India's first non-Congress Prime Minister, and at 81 the oldest person to take the office.

Atal Bihari Vajpayee received the Bharat Ratna in 2015 and is remembered for the Lahore bus journey of 1999, but he was not given the Nishan-e-Pakistan. P.V. Narasimha Rao received the Bharat Ratna in 2024. Lal Bahadur Shastri received it posthumously in 1966, the year he signed the Tashkent Declaration with Pakistan. The pairing of a peace gesture with Pakistan and a national award is what makes the distractors plausible, but only Morarji Desai holds both awards.

The correct answer is Gulzarilal Nanda. When Jawaharlal Nehru died on 27 May 1964, Gulzarilal Nanda, the senior-most minister, was sworn in as acting Prime Minister and held office for about two weeks until the Congress party chose Lal Bahadur Shastri. When Shastri died at Tashkent in January 1966, Nanda again served as acting Prime Minister until Indira Gandhi took over. He is the only person to have been acting Prime Minister twice, and he received the Bharat Ratna in 1997.

Indira Gandhi became Prime Minister only in 1966, after Shastri's death, not after Nehru's. Morarji Desai was a contender for the post in 1964 and 1966 but became Prime Minister only in 1977, as the first non-Congress Prime Minister. Zakir Husain was Vice-President in 1964 and later became President; he never held the office of Prime Minister. The Constitution has no post of acting Prime Minister; the President simply appoints a Prime Minister to fill the gap.

The correct answer is Prime Minister. NITI Aayog, the National Institution for Transforming India, was set up on 1 January 2015 by a resolution of the Union Cabinet to replace the Planning Commission, which had existed since 1950. The Prime Minister is its ex officio Chairperson, just as the Prime Minister chaired the Planning Commission. It also has a Vice-Chairperson appointed by the Prime Minister, a Chief Executive Officer, and a Governing Council that includes the Chief Ministers of all States and the Lieutenant Governors of Union Territories.

The President has no role in NITI Aayog. Senior Union ministers, usually including the Home Minister and the Finance Minister, are its ex officio members, which makes them tempting options, but neither chairs it. Note that NITI Aayog is neither a constitutional nor a statutory body: it was created by an executive resolution, like the Planning Commission before it. The Prime Minister also chairs other bodies, such as the National Disaster Management Authority, the Inter-State Council and the National Integration Council.

The correct answer is 75(3). Article 75(3) says the Council of Ministers shall be collectively responsible to the House of the People, the Lok Sabha. Collective responsibility means ministers stand or fall together: a Cabinet decision binds every minister, even one who disagreed in private, and if the Lok Sabha passes a no-confidence motion the entire Council of Ministers, including ministers who are members of the Rajya Sabha, must resign.

The other options are real clauses with different content. Article 74(1) provides the Council of Ministers to aid and advise the President. Article 72(1) is the President's power to grant pardons. Article 73 deals with the extent of the executive power of the Union, the subjects on which the Union government can act. Notice that the responsibility runs to the Lok Sabha alone, not to the Rajya Sabha or to Parliament as a whole, because only the directly elected House can make or unmake a government.

The correct answer is 6 consecutive months. Article 75(5) says a minister who for any period of six consecutive months is not a member of either House of Parliament shall, at the end of that period, cease to be a minister. So a person can be appointed a minister, or even Prime Minister, without being an MP, but must win a seat in the Lok Sabha or the Rajya Sabha within six months. P.V. Narasimha Rao became Prime Minister in 1991 this way and then won a Lok Sabha by-election.

The other durations are made up, and three months is the most tempting because people half-remember the "three months" in other rules. The same six-month rule applies in the States under Article 164(4): a Chief Minister or State minister who is not a member of the State legislature must become one within six months. The rule lets a government bring in talent from outside politics, but only for a limited time, after which the minister must face the voters or be chosen by a legislature.

The correct answer is conduct of business of the Government of India. Article 77 says all executive action of the Government of India shall be expressed to be taken in the name of the President, and that the President shall make rules for the more convenient transaction of the government's business and for allocating it among ministers. These are the Government of India (Allocation of Business) Rules and the Transaction of Business Rules, under which each ministry knows its subjects.

The three other options all concern the Vice-President, and they come from a different set of Articles: the office of Vice-President is created by Article 63, the term of office is in Article 67, and the oath is in Article 69. Examiners mix them in because the Articles are close together. Remember the sequence of the executive Articles: 74 Council of Ministers, 75 appointment and rules, 76 Attorney General, 77 conduct of business, and 78 the Prime Minister's duties towards the President.

The correct answer is Article 75. Article 75(1) says the Prime Minister shall be appointed by the President and the other ministers shall be appointed by the President on the advice of the Prime Minister. The rest of Article 75 contains the other key rules: the 15% cap on the size of the ministry (clause 1A), collective responsibility to the Lok Sabha (clause 3), the oath (clause 4), the six-month rule for non-members (clause 5) and salaries (clause 6).

The wrong options are Articles from other parts of Chapter I and II of Part V. Article 70 deals with the discharge of the President's functions in other contingencies. Article 79 says Parliament consists of the President and the two Houses. Article 85 deals with the sessions of Parliament and its prorogation and dissolution. Since Article 75 packs so many rules into one Article, questions from it come up again and again; learn its clauses rather than just the number.

The correct answer is Council of Ministers to aid and advise President. Article 74(1) says there shall be a Council of Ministers with the Prime Minister at its head to aid and advise the President, who shall act in accordance with that advice. The 42nd Amendment (1976) made the advice binding, and the 44th Amendment (1978) allowed the President to send it back once for reconsideration. Article 74(2) adds that no court can inquire whether, and what, advice was given.

The other options describe appointments made under other Articles. The Chief Justice of India is appointed by the President under Article 124. The Vice-President is not appointed at all; he or she is elected by the members of both Houses of Parliament under Article 66. The chairman of the Finance Commission is appointed by the President under Article 280. Article 74 is the foundation of parliamentary government in India: it is the reason the President acts as a constitutional head while real power lies with the Council of Ministers.

The correct answer is C, Finance Commission. Article 280 requires the President to constitute a Finance Commission every fifth year, or earlier if needed, with a chairman and four other members. It recommends how the net proceeds of taxes should be divided between the Union and the states and shared among the states, what grants-in-aid the states should get from the Consolidated Fund of India, and how state funds can be strengthened to support panchayats and municipalities. The first Finance Commission was set up in 1951 under K C Neogy, and its advice is recommendatory, not binding. Option A is wrong because the Advocate General of a state is appointed under Article 165. Option B is wrong because the Central Vigilance Commission began as an executive body in 1964 and became statutory under an Act of 2003. Option D is wrong because the National Commission for Women is statutory, created by an Act of 1990. Exam tip: Article 280 Finance Commission, Article 148 CAG, Article 324 Election Commission.

The correct answer is D, Diwan-i-insha. The Diwan-i-insha was the department of royal correspondence in the Delhi Sultanate. It drafted the Sultan's letters and orders to provincial governors and other rulers, kept copies of them and was headed by the Dabir-i-khas, who had to be a careful writer of Persian because the wording of a farman carried the Sultan's authority. Option A is wrong because the Diwan-i-arz was the military department, under the Ariz-i-mumalik, which recruited soldiers, paid them and held the horse-branding and descriptive roll system. Option B is wrong because the Diwan-i-khairat was the department of charity, set up by Firoz Shah Tughlaq to give help to the poor and to arrange marriages of poor girls. Option C is wrong because the Diwan-i-risalat looked after religious matters and grants to scholars. Exam tip: insha for letters, arz for the army, wizarat for finance.