State Exams GK Questions 2026

The machine was used for the first time in 1982 at the Paravur assembly constituency in Kerala, in a by-election and only in a part of the polling stations; the experiment was challenged for want of a statutory basis, Parliament then amended the law in 1989 to permit the machine…

This committee reported in 1998 on state funding of elections and recommended that funding be partial, be given in kind rather than as cash, and be confined to recognised national and state parties, with the caution that the state of public finances allowed only a limited beginning.

In this judgment of 2013 the Supreme Court held that the right to reject every candidate is part of the freedom of expression and of the secrecy of the ballot, and it directed the Election Commission to provide a None of the Above button; the Commission used it from the…

The Election Symbols (Reservation and Allotment) Order, 1968 was issued by the Election Commission under Article 324 and the Conduct of Elections Rules, and it governs the recognition of national and state parties, the reservation of symbols for them, the list of free symbols for other candidates, and disputes between…

Section 29A of the Representation of the People Act, 1951 is the provision under which an association or body of individual citizens applies to the Election Commission for registration as a political party, and the application must carry a specific undertaking of true faith and allegiance to the Constitution, to…

The Tenth Schedule was added by the Fifty-second Amendment in 1985 and it disqualifies a member of Parliament or of a state legislature who voluntarily gives up the membership of the party on whose ticket the seat was won, or who votes or abstains against the party direction; the Speaker…

The Constitution (Sixty-first Amendment) Act, 1988 amended Article 326 and lowered the qualifying age for a voter from twenty-one to eighteen years, and it took effect in March 1989, so the general election of 1989 was the first in which eighteen-year-olds voted.

The elephant is the reserved symbol of the Bahujan Samaj Party, founded by Kanshi Ram in 1984; because the elephant is also used by another party in Assam and Sikkim, the Election Commission allots it to the Bahujan Samaj Party elsewhere, a detail that shows how reserved symbols work under…

Article 324 places the superintendence, direction and control of the preparation of electoral rolls and the conduct of all elections to Parliament, to the state legislatures and to the offices of President and Vice-President in the Election Commission of India, and this is the Article the Commission relies on when…

Nehru died in office on 27 May 1964, Gulzarilal Nanda served as acting Prime Minister for the thirteen days that followed, and Lal Bahadur Shastri was sworn in on 9 June 1964; he led the country through the war of 1965, gave the slogan Jai Jawan Jai Kisan and died…

Sukumar Sen, an officer of the Indian Civil Service, was the first Chief Election Commissioner and conducted the first general election, held from October 1951 to February 1952 for the Lok Sabha and the state assemblies together, with about one hundred seventy-three million electors, most of whom could not read…

The five principles of mutual respect for sovereignty and territorial integrity, non-aggression, non-interference in internal affairs, equality and mutual benefit, and peaceful coexistence were written into the preamble of the Agreement on Trade and Intercourse with the Tibet region of China, signed on 29 April 1954 and associated with Nehru…

Indian forces entered Goa, Daman and Diu on 18 and 19 December 1961 in Operation Vijay, Portuguese rule of four and a half centuries ended, and Goa was administered as a union territory until it became the twenty-fifth state of India in 1987, with Konkani recognised as its official language.

The Balwantrai Mehta Committee of 1957 recommended democratic decentralisation through a three-tier structure of the gram panchayat, the panchayat samiti and the zila parishad, and Nehru inaugurated the scheme at Nagaur on 2 October 1959, which makes Rajasthan the first state to adopt Panchayati Raj.

The Second Five Year Plan, which ran from 1956 to 1961, was built on the two-sector model of Prasanta Chandra Mahalanobis and gave the first place to heavy and basic industry; the public sector steel plants at Bhilai, Rourkela and Durgapur belong to this plan, and the Industrial Policy Resolution…

The Bombay Reorganisation Act divided the bilingual state of Bombay into Maharashtra, with Bombay as its capital, and Gujarat, with Ahmedabad and later Gandhinagar as its capital, and the day is observed as Maharashtra Day and Gujarat Day.

The Act came into force on 1 November 1956 and, along with the Seventh Amendment of the same year, ended the old classification of Part A, Part B, Part C and Part D states that the Constitution had set out in 1950, leaving fourteen states and six union territories.

The States Reorganisation Commission was appointed in December 1953 under Justice Fazl Ali, with the historian and diplomat K. M. Panikkar and the educationist H. N. Kunzru as its two members, and its report of 1955 accepted language as a basis for reorganisation while rejecting the formula of one language…

He fasted for a separate Telugu-speaking state and died on 15 December 1952 on the fifty-eighth day of the fast; the protests that followed forced the government to announce Andhra State, which was created on 1 October 1953 as the first state formed on a linguistic basis, with Kurnool as…

The States Department was created in July 1947 with Patel as the minister in charge and V. P. Menon as its secretary, and the pair persuaded the rulers to sign the Instrument of Accession, which is why Patel is remembered as the Iron Man of India and his birthday is…