SSC Previous Year GK Questions with Answers

The correct answer is A, heavy water. The CANDU design, from which India's pressurised heavy water reactors descend, burns natural uranium, and natural uranium contains only about seven parts in a thousand of the fissile isotope uranium 235. Such a lean fuel can sustain a chain reaction only if very few neutrons are wasted, and heavy water absorbs far fewer neutrons than ordinary water while still slowing them down, so it serves as both moderator and coolant. Option B is wrong because light water absorbs too many neutrons, which is why reactors that use it must be fuelled with enriched uranium. Option C is wrong because carbon dioxide is used as a coolant in gas cooled reactors, where graphite is the moderator. Option D is wrong because liquid sodium is the coolant of a fast breeder reactor, which deliberately has no moderator at all.

The correct answer is B, the 92nd Constitution Amendment Act of 2003. That amendment added four languages, Bodo, Dogri, Maithili and Santhali, to the Eighth Schedule and took the count from 18 to 22, where it stands. Option A is wrong because the 73rd Amendment of 1992 is the Panchayati Raj amendment, which inserted Part IX and the Eleventh Schedule; the language amendment of that year was the 71st, which added Konkani, Manipuri and Nepali. Option C is wrong because the 103rd Amendment provides reservation for the economically weaker sections and has nothing to do with language. Option D is wrong because the 101st Amendment introduced the Goods and Services Tax. Remember the three language amendments in order: the 21st of 1967 added Sindhi, the 71st of 1992 added three languages and the 92nd of 2003 added four.

The correct answer is B, Austro-Asiatic family. The tribal languages of Jharkhand and the neighbouring belt of central and eastern India, namely Santali, Mundari, Ho and Kurukh's neighbours in the Munda group, belong to the Austro-Asiatic family, whose Indian branch is called Munda. Santali, written in the Ol Chiki script, is the best known of them and was added to the Eighth Schedule in 2003. Option A is wrong because Indo-European, through its Indo-Aryan branch, covers Hindi, Bengali and Odia, the regional languages of the plains, not the tribal languages of the plateau. Option C is wrong because the Tibeto-Burman family lies along the Himalayan belt and the north-east, far from central India. Option D is wrong because the Dravidian family is concentrated in the south, although the Dravidian language Kurukh is indeed spoken by the Oraon of the same region, which is what makes this option a tempting trap.

The correct answer is D, basketball. Pivoting is the legal turn in which a player holding the ball keeps one foot fixed on the floor, the pivot foot, and steps around with the other foot; it lets a player face the basket or protect the ball without being called for travelling. Option A is wrong because hockey uses bully, short corner, penalty stroke, scoop and dribble. Option B is wrong because volleyball uses service, spike, block, dig and libero. Option C is wrong because badminton uses smash, drop shot, net shot, lob and deuce. Basketball also contributes dunk, rebound, free throw and hold ball to exam papers, and the game's other favourite fact is the ring height of 3.05 metres, so revise the two together. The pivot foot may be lifted to shoot or pass, but it must not return to the floor before the ball leaves the hand.

The correct answer is A, golf. In golf an albatross, also called a double eagle, means holing out in three strokes fewer than the par of that hole, which is among the rarest feats in the game. The same bird family gives birdie for one stroke under par and eagle for two under, while a score over par is a bogey. Option B is wrong because polo is played on horseback and its period of play is a chukker, its stick a mallet. Option C is wrong because fencing uses foil, epee and sabre, with terms such as riposte, lunge and parry. Option D is wrong because rugby speaks of a try, a conversion, a scrum and a line-out. When a question offers a bird name among the options, golf is almost always the intended sport.

The correct answer is C, 1761. The Third Battle of Panipat was fought on 14 January 1761 between the Maratha army led by Sadashivrao Bhau, with Vishwasrao the Peshwa's son, and Ahmad Shah Abdali, also called Durrani, supported by the Rohillas and the Nawab of Awadh. The Marathas were defeated with very heavy losses, and Peshwa Balaji Baji Rao died within months. Option A is wrong because 1781 falls in the First Anglo-Maratha War, which ended in the Treaty of Salbai in 1782. Option B is wrong because by 1851 the Maratha confederacy had already been dissolved after 1818 and Punjab too had been annexed. Option D is wrong because 1831 belongs to the period of Company dominance and no Panipat battle was fought then. The three battles of Panipat are 1526, 1556 and 1761.

The correct answer is C, Tanaji Malusare. Tanaji led the night assault that recovered the fort of Kondana from the Mughal garrison in 1670 and was killed in the fighting. Shivaji is said to have mourned that the lion was gone though the fort was won, and the fort was renamed Sinhagad, the fort of the lion. Option A is wrong because Chimaji Appa was a brother of Peshwa Baji Rao I and is remembered for taking Vasai from the Portuguese in 1739, seventy years later. Option B is wrong because Baji Prabhu Deshpande died holding the pass of Pavan Khind in 1660 so that Shivaji could reach Vishalgad safely, a different episode that papers deliberately place among the options. Option D is wrong because Baji Pasalkar was an early companion from the Pune region and is not connected with Kondana.

The correct answer is D, churning poor. In the standard classification the churning poor are those whose consumption crosses the poverty line and falls back below it again and again, the typical cases being small and marginal farmers and casual labourers whose earnings depend on the season. Option A is wrong because the occasionally poor are usually above the line and slip below it only now and then, for example after an illness or a crop failure, so their movement is not regular. Option B is wrong because the usually poor are below the line most of the time and form part of the chronic poor rather than the group that moves in and out. Option C is wrong because the chronic poor, made up of the always poor and the usually poor, stay below the line year after year and are precisely the group that does not move across it.

The correct answer is D, the NSSO. The National Sample Survey Office carries out the large household surveys of consumption expenditure from which the number of people below the poverty line is worked out, and it now functions within the National Statistical Office under the Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation. Option A is wrong because the Ministry of Finance uses poverty estimates in the budget and the Economic Survey but does not collect the household data. Option B is wrong because the Reserve Bank of India is the monetary authority and the banking regulator; the statistics it collects concern money, credit and payments, not household consumption baskets. Option C is wrong because the Central Statistics Office prepared national accounts and the index of industrial production; sample surveys of households were the work of the NSSO, and the two were merged into the National Statistical Office in 2019.

The correct answer is C, the right mix of minerals and organic matter. Fertility needs mineral nutrients such as nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium from the weathered rock, and organic matter, that is humus from decayed plants and animals, which holds water, feeds soil organisms and releases nutrients slowly. Option A is wrong because an excess of acid lowers the availability of nutrients and harms root growth, which is why lime is added to strongly acidic fields. Option B is wrong because it leaves out organic matter and mentions only inorganic material; a soil of pure mineral grains, such as desert sand, is not fertile however rich its minerals. Option D is wrong because high salt content is the mark of saline or usar land, which is among the least productive soil in the country and has to be reclaimed with gypsum and drainage before it can be cropped.

The correct answer is D, weathering. Weathering is the natural breaking down of rock by temperature, water, wind and living things, and it is the process that makes soil in the first place; it is not a technique that a farmer applies to save soil, so it cannot be a conservation method. Option A is wrong as an answer because intercropping, growing two crops together in alternate rows, keeps the ground covered through the season and reduces the impact of rain on bare soil. Option B is wrong as an answer because mulching covers the bare ground between plants with straw or crop residue, which cuts evaporation and stops the topsoil from being washed or blown away. Option C is wrong as an answer because contour ploughing runs furrows across the slope instead of down it, so each furrow acts as a small barrier to running water.

The correct answer is C, sheet erosion. In sheet erosion water spreads over a wide slope and carries away a thin, even film of topsoil, so nothing obvious is left behind to see, and the loss is noticed only years later as falling yields. That invisibility is what makes it the most dangerous form for farmers. Option A is wrong because gully erosion cuts visible channels down a slope, deep enough to stop a plough. Option B is wrong because a landslide is a sudden and highly visible mass movement of rock and soil down a hillside. Option D is wrong because ravines are gullies that have widened and deepened over a large area, producing the badland of the Chambal valley, which is visible even from the air. The order of visibility runs from sheet erosion at the least to landslides at the most.

The correct answer is B, because black soil is poor in phosphoric acid, nitrogen and organic matter, not rich in them. What it is rich in is calcium carbonate, magnesium, potash and lime, and remembering that short list is the safest way to answer any statement question on this soil. Option A is a correct statement, since black soil formed from the weathering of the lava of the Deccan trap and its main belt lies over Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh, Gujarat and Chhattisgarh. Option C is a correct statement, because the fine clayey texture of the soil lets it hold moisture through the dry months, which is exactly why cotton grows on it without irrigation. Option D is a correct statement, because the soil shrinks in the heat and opens deep cracks that let air into the lower layers, giving it the name self-ploughing soil.

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 B, dienes. The prefix di stands for two and the ending ene for a carbon to carbon double bond, so a diene is a hydrocarbon carrying exactly two such bonds; buta-1,3-diene, the raw material of synthetic rubber, is the standard example. Option A is wrong because terpenes are a class of natural compounds built from isoprene units and found in the oils of plants; they may contain several double bonds but the name says nothing about the number. Option C is wrong because the ending yne refers to a triple bond, so a name of that kind would describe three triple bonds and not double bonds at all. Option D is wrong for the same reason: it would mean two triple bonds. Reading the prefix for the count and the ending for the kind of bond answers the whole family of such questions.

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 A, Maithon. The Maithon dam is built across the Barakar, a tributary of the Damodar, in Jharkhand, and is one of the reservoirs of the Damodar Valley Corporation, so it has nothing to do with the Kaveri. The other three are all on the Kaveri and should be memorised together. Option B, Mettur in Tamil Nadu, holds back the Stanley Reservoir and is the main storage for the Kaveri delta. Option C, Kallanai or the Grand Anicut, was built by the Chola king Karikala to divert the river into the delta channels and is the oldest water-diversion structure in India still in use. Option D, Krishna Raja Sagara in Karnataka, was built near Mysuru with Sir M. Visvesvaraya as the engineer, and the Brindavan Gardens lie below it.

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 President. Under Article 360(4), while a Financial Emergency is in operation, the President can issue directions for reducing the salaries and allowances of all or any class of persons serving the Union, including the judges of the Supreme Court and the High Courts. This is a striking exception, because in normal times a judge's salary cannot be varied to his or her disadvantage after appointment, a protection meant to keep the judiciary independent.

The Prime Minister leads the government that would advise such a step, but the power is given to the President. The Chief Justice has no power to cut judges' salaries; he or she heads the judiciary but does not control its pay. The Finance Commission, set up under Article 280, recommends how tax revenue is shared between the Centre and the States and has no role in an emergency. During a Financial Emergency the Centre can also require State money bills to be reserved for the President's consideration.

The correct answer is Article 360. It allows the President to proclaim a Financial Emergency if satisfied that the financial stability or credit of India, or of any part of its territory, is threatened. The proclamation must be approved by both Houses within two months by a simple majority, and once approved it continues until revoked, with no maximum period and no need for repeated approval.

The other options are related Articles, which is why they confuse. Article 356 provides for President's Rule when the constitutional machinery in a State fails. Article 365 lets the President treat a State's failure to follow the Union's directions as such a failure. Article 330 reserves seats for Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes in the Lok Sabha and has nothing to do with emergencies. During a Financial Emergency the Centre can direct the States to observe financial propriety and the President can order salary cuts, even for judges of the Supreme Court and the High Courts.