State Exams Previous Year GK Questions with Answers

The correct answer is C, Residuary powers in the Centre – Canadian Constitution. The makers of the Constitution took the scheme of a federation with a strong centre from Canada, and with it the rule that subjects not listed in any of the three lists stay with the Union; Article 248 and entry 97 of the Union List carry that rule. The appointment of state Governors by the centre and the advisory jurisdiction of the Supreme Court come from the same source. Option A is wrong because the Directive Principles were borrowed from the Irish constitution; Australia gave the Concurrent List, freedom of trade and commerce, and the joint sitting of the two Houses. Option B names the American constitution for the federal system, whereas from the United States came fundamental rights, judicial review, an independent judiciary and the impeachment procedure. Option D is wrong because fundamental duties were taken from the constitution of the erstwhile USSR. Exam tip: Canada for residuary powers, Ireland for Directive Principles, USSR for duties.

The correct answer is B, Article 200. When a bill passed by a state legislature is presented to the Governor, Article 200 gives four courses: give assent, withhold assent, return the bill for reconsideration if it is not a money bill, or reserve it for the consideration of the President. Reservation is compulsory in one case, where the bill would take away the powers of the High Court, and is otherwise left to the Governor, for example when a bill clashes with a central law or touches a subject in which the Union has an interest. Option C, Article 201, is the next step and not the answer: it says what the President does with a bill so reserved, and the state legislature cannot overrule that decision. Option A, Article 169, deals with the creation or abolition of a legislative council in a state. Option D, Article 257, is about the control of the Union over states in certain matters. Exam tip: 200 reserves the bill, 201 decides it.

The correct answer is A, Amber-Jaipur School. Gopal, Udai, Hukma and Jiwan were court painters of the Amber-Jaipur school, which grew first in the ateliers of Amber and then in the new capital after Sawai Jai Singh II founded Jaipur in 1727. The school reached its height under Sawai Pratap Singh, whose karkhana employed dozens of artists; its best known master, Sahibram, painted life-size portraits, and Krishna subjects such as the Ragamala and Bhagavata sets were favourites. Very large paintings, life-size portraits and green and yellow backgrounds mark the style. Option B is wrong because the Bikaner school is identified with Ruknuddin, Shahdin and Ustad Ali Raza, artists trained in the Mughal manner. Option C is wrong because Jodhpur or Marwar painting is associated with Shivdas, Kishandas and Dalchand. Option D is wrong because the Mewar school of Udaipur is led by Sahibdin and Manohar, who painted the Rasikapriya and Ramayana series. Exam tip: Sahibram belongs to Jaipur, Sahibdin to Mewar.

The correct answer is A, 1990. SIDBI was set up under the Small Industries Development Bank of India Act, 1989 and began operations in 1990 as the principal financial institution for the promotion, financing and development of micro, small and medium enterprises. It started as a subsidiary of IDBI and its head office is at Lucknow, which is itself a frequently asked detail.

Option B, 1988, is the year before the Act and is a common trap. Option C, 1992, is the year the Securities and Exchange Board of India became a statutory body, and Option D, 1994, is the year the first new generation private banks were licensed after the Narasimham Committee report. Keeping the development institutions in order helps: NABARD in 1982, SIDBI in 1990, and the National Housing Bank in 1988, each set up by its own Act of Parliament.

The correct answer is A, Maharashtra. The Kanheri caves are cut into a basalt hill inside the Sanjay Gandhi National Park in Mumbai. They are a Buddhist group of more than a hundred cells, chaityas and viharas cut over several centuries from about the first century BCE, with rock-cut cisterns and a large chaitya hall with stupa and standing Buddha figures.

Option B, Odisha, has Buddhist sites at Ratnagiri, Udayagiri and Lalitgiri, but these are brick monasteries and stupas, not the Kanheri caves. Option C, Rajasthan, has no major Buddhist rock-cut group; its heritage is fort and temple architecture in stone. Option D, Delhi, has no ancient rock-cut caves at all. Maharashtra is the home of Indian rock-cut architecture and also holds Ajanta, Ellora, Bhaja, Karle, Bedsa and Elephanta.

The correct answer is C, 1949. The Reserve Bank of India began as a shareholders' bank and was taken into public ownership on 1 January 1949 under the Reserve Bank (Transfer to Public Ownership) Act, 1948. Since then the entire capital has been held by the Government of India, although the Bank continues to be run by a Central Board under its own Act of 1934.

Option A, 1971, is the year in which the Bank's insurance related subsidiary work expanded and is close to the 1969 bank nationalisation, so it is placed to confuse. Option B, 1956, is the year the Imperial Bank of India became the State Bank of India, which candidates often mix up with this event. Option D, 1935, is the year the Reserve Bank began operations, on 1 April, under the Act of 1934, and is the commonest wrong answer of the four.

The correct answer is C, Habib Tanvir. He was a playwright, director and actor of the modern Indian theatre, best known for Charandas Chor and for working with folk performers of Chhattisgarh in his company Naya Theatre. He belongs to drama, not to painting, so he is the odd one out.

Option A, Tyeb Mehta, was a painter of the Progressive Artists Group generation, known for his diagonal canvases and the Falling Figure and Mahishasura series. Option B, Jamini Roy, was a Bengal painter who left academic realism for the bold flat line of Kalighat painting and folk art of Bengal. Option D, Satish Gujral, was a painter, sculptor and muralist who also designed the Belgian Embassy building in New Delhi, so painting is one of his fields. Questions of this kind slip one name from theatre, music or sculpture into a list of painters.

The correct answer is B, Bihar. Madhubani painting, also called Mithila painting, belongs to the Mithila region of northern Bihar around the districts of Madhubani and Darbhanga. It was traditionally painted by women on the plastered walls and floors of the house for weddings and festivals, using natural dyes and a nib of bamboo wrapped in cloth, and it is now also done on paper and cloth. Its styles are Bharni, Katchni, Godna and Tantrik, and Sita Devi, Ganga Devi and Mahasundari Devi are its best known artists. It carries a Geographical Indication tag.

Option A, Uttar Pradesh, is not its home, though Mithila culture extends towards the Nepal border and not into the Doab. Option C, Kerala, is known for temple murals and Kathakali, not Madhubani. Option D, Tamil Nadu, is known for Tanjore painting with its gold foil, so it is the usual distractor in this question.

The correct answer is C, Microsoft Excel. An electronic spreadsheet stores data in a grid of rows and columns and recalculates its formulas whenever a value changes, and Excel is the spreadsheet program of the Microsoft Office suite. Its files carry the .xlsx extension from Excel 2007 onwards.

Option A, Microsoft Word, is a word processor, used to type, edit and format text documents that are saved with the .docx extension. Option B, Microsoft PowerPoint, is presentation software, used to build slides for a talk and saved with the .pptx extension. Option D, Microsoft Access, is the database management program of the suite; it also shows tables in a grid, which makes it the strongest distractor, but a database stores records in related tables and is queried, while a spreadsheet calculates cell by cell. Remember the pairing of the four programs with their jobs and this whole family of questions becomes easy.

The correct answer is C, Text. LEN returns the number of characters in an entry, counting letters, digits, punctuation and spaces alike, so =LEN("Excel") gives 5. Because it works on text rather than on values, Excel files it under the Text category of the Formulas tab, along with LEFT, RIGHT, MID, UPPER, LOWER, TRIM and CONCATENATE.

Option A, Financial, holds the money functions such as PMT, RATE, NPV and FV, which work out instalments, interest rates and present values. Option B, Logical, holds IF, AND, OR, NOT and IFERROR, the functions that test a condition and return one result or another. Option D, Math and Trig, holds SUM, ROUND, ABS, SQRT, POWER and MOD, which calculate on numbers. LEN does return a number, and that is the trap that pulls candidates towards D, but a function is classified by what it works on, and LEN works on text.

The correct answer is A, Title bar. The title bar is the strip along the very top of the Excel window, and it carries the name of the open workbook followed by the name of the program, for example Book1 - Excel. The minimise, maximise and close buttons sit at its right end, and the Quick Access Toolbar at its left.

Option B, the tool bar, holds command buttons rather than names; in Excel 2007 and later it survives only as the small Quick Access Toolbar. Option C, the task bar, belongs to the Windows operating system and not to Excel; it runs along the bottom of the screen and shows the Start button and the programs that are open. Option D, the menu bar, was the row of word menus of Excel 2003 and earlier, replaced by the ribbon from Excel 2007; it listed commands such as File and Edit, never the file name. The cell address, by contrast, is shown in the Name Box beside the formula bar.

The correct answer is B, Hindi. The Vyas Samman was instituted in 1991 by the K. K. Birla Foundation and is given for an outstanding literary work in Hindi published in the previous ten years. Its first recipient was the critic and scholar Ram Vilas Sharma.

Option A, Rajasthani, is the language of the foundation's Bihari Puraskar, which is open to a writer from Rajasthan writing in either Hindi or Rajasthani, and that overlap is what makes this option tempting. Option C, Sanskrit, has no award of its own from this foundation, though a Sanskrit writer is eligible for the Saraswati Samman because Sanskrit is in the Eighth Schedule. Option D, Konkani, is likewise covered by the Saraswati Samman rather than by the Vyas Samman. The clean distinction to carry into the exam is that the Vyas Samman is for Hindi alone while the Saraswati Samman, instituted by the same foundation in the same year, is open to every Eighth Schedule language.

The correct answer is C, Ctrl + click. Holding the Ctrl key and clicking anywhere inside a sentence selects that whole sentence, from its first letter to the full stop that ends it, and the selected sentence can then be deleted, moved or formatted in one action. The selection shortcuts form a ladder: a double click selects a word, a Ctrl + click selects a sentence, a triple click selects the whole paragraph and Ctrl + A selects the entire document.

Option A, Alt with a click, does not select a sentence; Alt held down while dragging selects a rectangular block of text running down several lines. Option B, a single click, only places the insertion point at that spot and selects nothing at all. Option D, a double click, selects the single word under the pointer, which is the step below a sentence on the same ladder.

The correct answer is B, 11. A new blank document in Microsoft Word 2016 opens in the Calibri font at a size of 11 points, and the same pair of defaults is used from Word 2007 through Word 2019. The setting can be seen in the Font group of the Home tab the moment a new document is created, and it can be altered for every future document through the Font dialog box by choosing the font and the size and then clicking Set As Default.

Option A, 10 points, is not the default of any Word version in common use. Option C, 12 points, is the size many offices and universities insist on for a printed report, and it was the default size of the older Times New Roman default in Word 2003, which is why it is the favourite distractor here. Option D, 14 points, is a heading size a user applies by hand and is never the default body size.

The correct answer is A, Rabindranath Tagore, who won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1913 for Gitanjali, the English rendering of his own Bengali poems. He was the first Indian and also the first person from Asia to be awarded a Nobel Prize in any category, and the prize brought Indian writing to the notice of readers across Europe.

Option B, Mother Teresa, won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1979, sixty six years later, for her work among the poor and the dying in Kolkata. Option C, Amartya Sen, won the prize in Economic Sciences in 1998 for his work on welfare economics and famines. Option D, C. V. Raman, won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1930 for the scattering of light known as the Raman Effect, which makes him the first Indian to win a Nobel in the sciences but still seventeen years after Tagore.

The correct answer is D, 6. The Nobel Prize is awarded every year in six categories: Physics, Chemistry, Physiology or Medicine, Literature, Peace and Economic Sciences. The first five were named in the will of Alfred Nobel and have been given since 1901, while the prize in Economic Sciences was instituted by the Sveriges Riksbank in 1968 and awarded for the first time in 1969.

Option A, 5, is the number of categories in Nobel's own will and is therefore the strongest distractor, but the count asked for today includes economics. Option B, 7, is one more than the list and matches no prize category. Option C, 4, would leave out two of the sciences altogether. The Peace Prize among the six is decided in Norway and presented at Oslo, while the other five are presented at Stockholm on 10 December each year.

The correct answer is B, Chandragupta I. The first two members of the family, Sri Gupta and Ghatotkacha, used only the modest title Maharaja, which historians read as a sign that they were subordinate rulers. Chandragupta I was the first to assume the imperial title Maharajadhiraja, king of great kings, and the Gupta era of 319 to 320 CE is counted from his accession. His marriage to the Lichchhavi princess Kumaradevi is celebrated on the king and queen type gold coins.

Option A, Ramagupta, is a shadowy figure known mainly from the play Devichandraguptam and a few inscriptions, and he never raised the family's status. Option C, Samudragupta, was Chandragupta I's son and inherited the imperial title rather than introducing it. Option D, Skandagupta, ruled almost a century and a half later and is remembered for checking the Hunas.

The correct answer is C, issuance of treasury bills. A receipt is capital if it either creates a liability for the government or reduces an asset it holds. A treasury bill is a short-term borrowing instrument, so issuing it creates a liability that must be repaid, and it is therefore classified as a capital receipt along with market loans, external loans, recovery of loans and disinvestment proceeds.

Option A, commercial revenue, is earned by government departments and undertakings from the sale of goods and services and neither creates a liability nor reduces an asset, so it is non-tax revenue. Option B, interest received on loans advanced by the government, is likewise recurring non-tax revenue. Option D, dividends and profits received from public sector undertakings and the Reserve Bank, is also non-tax revenue. All three are revenue receipts.

The correct answer is C, the Agulhas current. It is a warm current of the Indian Ocean that flows southward along the eastern coast of southern Africa, carrying tropical water towards the Cape before most of it turns back into the Indian Ocean. Along with the Mozambique and West Australian currents it makes up the southern Indian Ocean gyre.

Option A, the Florida current, belongs to the Atlantic; it carries water out of the Gulf of Mexico past Florida and feeds the Gulf Stream. Option B, the Canary current, is also Atlantic, a cold current flowing south along the north-western coast of Africa past the Canary Islands. Option D, the Kurile or Oyashio current, is a cold current of the northern Pacific that flows south past the Kurile Islands towards Japan, where it meets the warm Kuroshio.

The correct answer is D, wetland conservation. The Ramsar Convention on Wetlands of International Importance was signed in 1971 in the Iranian city of Ramsar and came into force in 1975. It is the only global environmental treaty devoted to a single type of ecosystem, and parties designate wetlands of international importance for the Ramsar List and undertake to maintain their ecological character. The second of February is observed as World Wetlands Day.

Option A, climate change, is the subject of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change of 1992 and the protocols under it. Option B, pesticide pollution, comes closest to the Rotterdam Convention of 1998 on prior informed consent and the Stockholm Convention of 2001 on persistent organic pollutants. Option C, ozone layer depletion, belongs to the Vienna Convention of 1985 and the Montreal Protocol of 1987.