State Exams Previous Year GK Questions with Answers

The correct answer is D, the Uttar Pradesh State Legislature. Article 321 allows additional functions to be conferred on a Public Service Commission, and it names two different authorities for the two kinds of Commission: Parliament may extend the functions of the Union Public Service Commission, while the legislature of a state may extend the functions of that state's Public Service Commission. The functions of the Uttar Pradesh Public Service Commission are therefore extended by an Act of the Uttar Pradesh legislature. Option A is wrong because the Prime Minister has no such power under the Constitution. Option B is wrong because a Union ministry cannot legislate for a state Commission. Option C is wrong because the President appoints, removes and frames conditions of service, but extending functions is a legislative act under Article 321.

The correct answer is D, only 3. The chairman of the Union Public Service Commission is removed by the President under Article 317, and for misbehaviour only after the Supreme Court has held an inquiry on the President's reference and reported against him. No resolution of either House is needed at any stage, so Parliament has no role at all. Judges of the High Courts and of the Supreme Court, listed at 1 and 2, are removed by the President only after an address supported by a special majority of each House, so Parliament is central there. The Comptroller and Auditor General at 4 is removed in the same manner as a judge of the Supreme Court, which again requires an address by both Houses. Options A, B and C are wrong because each of them leaves out the UPSC chairman or wrongly brings in the judges or the CAG.

The correct answer is A, Raja Ram Mohan Roy. He founded the Atmiya Sabha, a society of friends for religious and philosophical discussion, at Calcutta in 1815, and it was the first of his organised efforts against idol worship and empty ritual. From it grew the Brahmo Sabha of 1828, later the Brahmo Samaj. Option B is wrong because Keshab Chandra Sen came a generation later and split the Brahmo Samaj by founding the Brahmo Samaj of India in 1866. Option C is wrong because Debendranath Tagore founded the Tattvabodhini Sabha in 1839 and joined the Brahmo Samaj in 1843, giving it organisation after Roy's death. Option D is wrong because Raja Radhakant Deb was an orthodox leader who founded the Dharma Sabha to oppose the abolition of sati, that is, to oppose Roy.

The correct answer is B, liberalisation. Liberalisation means freeing economic activity from government controls: industrial licences, import licences and quantitative restrictions, ceilings on investment and administered interest rates. In India this was the first strand of the reforms of 1991. Option A is wrong because globalisation is the wider integration of a country's economy with the world through trade, investment, technology and movement of people; removing trade barriers helps globalisation but the act itself is liberalisation. Option C is wrong because privatisation is a transfer of ownership or management from the state to private hands, which is a question of who owns a firm rather than of what rules it must follow. Option D is wrong because arbitration is a method of settling disputes outside the courts and has nothing to do with trade policy.

The correct answer is A, P. V. Narasimha Rao. He became Prime Minister in June 1991, in the middle of the balance of payments crisis, and his government devalued the rupee, borrowed from the International Monetary Fund and announced the New Economic Policy of liberalisation, privatisation and globalisation, with the Statement on Industrial Policy issued on 24 July 1991. Option C is the trap that catches most candidates: Manmohan Singh was the Finance Minister who presented the reform budget of 1991 and is rightly linked with the reforms, but he became Prime Minister only in 2004. Option B is wrong because Atal Bihari Vajpayee headed governments later, in 1996 and from 1998, when the second generation of reforms and much of the disinvestment took place. Option D is wrong because option A names the right person.

The correct answer is D, the assertion is false but the reason is true. Ahmedabad is a very large cotton textile centre and is called the Manchester of India, but it is not the largest in the country; that place belongs to Mumbai, the old Cottonopolis, which grew first because of its port, its mills and its capital, and Maharashtra remains ahead of Gujarat in the industry. The reason, however, is a correct statement in itself: Ahmedabad lies in the black soil tract of Gujarat where cotton is grown in quantity, so raw material has never been a constraint there. Options A and B both treat the assertion as true, which it is not. Option C reverses the position by calling the reason false, although Gujarat is indeed a leading cotton-growing state.

The correct answer is C, Micro Enterprise. Under the composite criteria notified in 2020, an enterprise with investment in plant, machinery or equipment up to one crore rupees and turnover up to five crore rupees is a micro enterprise, and the same ceilings apply whether it manufactures goods or renders services. An enterprise crossing either ceiling moves up a category.

Option A is wrong because tiny enterprise was a category of the older policy framework and is not used in the present classification. Option B is wrong because a small enterprise stood at investment up to ten crore rupees and turnover up to fifty crore under the same notification. Option D is wrong because a medium enterprise stood at fifty crore and two hundred and fifty crore rupees. The ceilings have since been revised upward, but an enterprise of this size remains in the micro category, so the answer does not change.

The correct answer is C, Ethyl alcohol. Ethyl alcohol, or ethanol, dissolves resins, gums, dyes and oils and also evaporates quickly, so paints, varnishes and polishes made with it dry fast; this makes it the common solvent of the paint industry. Its formula is C2H5OH, and it is got by the fermentation of molasses or grain and, these days, from sugarcane for blending with petrol. The same property of being a good solvent makes ethanol the base of tincture of iodine, cough syrups and many tonics. Alcohol meant for industry is mixed with poisonous substances such as methanol and then coloured, giving denatured spirit, so that it is not drunk. A is wrong because methyl alcohol is highly poisonous and even a small quantity can cause blindness or death, so its use is restricted. B is wrong because n-propyl alcohol is costly and little used on this scale. D is wrong because iso-propyl alcohol serves mainly as a rubbing alcohol and a cleaning agent. Exam tip: ethanol is C2H5OH, and denatured spirit is ethanol made undrinkable with methanol.

The correct answer is B, Magnetic field strength (H). Ampere-turns per metre, written AT/m, is the unit of magnetic field strength, because H is the magnetomotive force set up per unit length of the magnetic path. In a coil the magnetomotive force equals the current multiplied by the number of turns and is measured in ampere-turns; divide that by the length of the magnetic circuit and the result is H, which is why the unit carries a metre in the denominator. H is also called magnetising force, and in air it is linked to flux density by B equal to the permeability times H. A is wrong because magnetic flux density B is measured in tesla, that is weber per square metre. C is wrong because magnetic flux is measured in weber. D is wrong because magnetomotive force itself is measured in ampere-turns, with no length divided out. Exam tip: ampere-turn is magnetomotive force, ampere-turn per metre is field strength H, weber is flux and tesla is flux density.

The correct answer is A, Ability to operate 24/7. An online store is a website or an app and not a shop with shutters, so it can take orders at any hour of any day, and that round-the-clock selling is one of the clear gains of e-commerce. The other gains follow from the same fact: a seller reaches buyers anywhere in the country without opening branches, keeps costs down because no showroom or large sales staff is needed, and can study a customer's past orders to suggest goods that suit them. Payment is made by card, net banking or UPI, and the order can be tracked until delivery. B is wrong because e-commerce widens reach instead of limiting it, carrying a small seller to a national market. C is wrong because online sellers personalise the experience closely, using browsing and purchase history to recommend products. D is wrong because operational costs usually fall, since rent, electricity and counter staff are saved. Exam tip: the gains of e-commerce are round-the-clock service, wider reach, lower costs and personalised offers.

The correct answer is D, All of Above. An electronic spreadsheet such as Microsoft Excel or LibreOffice Calc can filter, merge and sort data, so all three belong to its work and no single one of them is the answer. A spreadsheet keeps data in a grid of rows and columns; the box where a row and a column meet is a cell, and a cell may hold a number, text or a formula. Its real strength is that a formula recalculates by itself the moment a figure it uses is changed, which is why spreadsheets are used for accounts, marksheets, salary statements and simple databases. Besides sorting and filtering it offers functions such as SUM, AVERAGE and COUNT, pivot tables, and charts drawn straight from the data. A is wrong because filtering, which hides rows that do not meet a condition, is only one of these jobs. B is wrong because merging cells is likewise only one. C is wrong because sorting, arranging rows by the order of a column, is one more. Exam tip: a spreadsheet file is a workbook and each page inside it is a worksheet.

The correct answer is C, B2C. Flipkart, Alibaba and Amazon run online marketplaces whose storefronts sell goods to individual shoppers, and a business selling to a consumer is business-to-consumer, or B2C. In this model a firm lists its products on a website or an app, the customer orders and pays online, and the goods reach the home, so the shop, the salesman and the cash counter are all replaced by software. B2C is the commonest face of e-commerce and the one ordinary buyers meet every day. A is wrong because consumer-to-business, C2B, is the reverse case, where an individual offers a service or product to a firm, as a freelance designer or a blogger selling advertising space does. B is wrong because consumer-to-consumer, C2C, means one individual selling to another through a platform such as OLX. D is wrong because business-to-business, B2B, covers a firm selling to another firm, as IndiaMART does. Exam tip: Amazon and Flipkart are B2C, OLX is C2C and IndiaMART is B2B.

The correct answer is B, Calcutta (Kolkata). India's first cotton mill was set up in 1818 at Fort Gloster near Calcutta, at Bauria in present-day Howrah district, so Kolkata holds the first place in the story of the Indian cotton industry. That early mill did not survive, and the first commercially successful cotton textile mill was started at Bombay in 1854 by Cowasjee Nanabhai Davar, which is why Mumbai came to be called the Manchester of India. Ahmedabad followed in 1861, when Ranchhodlal Chhotalal set up its first mill, and the city grew into so large a centre that it earned the name Manchester of the East. A is wrong because Surat was famous for handloom textile trade in Mughal times, not for the first mill. C is wrong because Ahmedabad's mill of 1861 came much later. D is wrong because Coimbatore, called the Manchester of South India, built its mills only in the twentieth century. Exam tip: first mill 1818 near Kolkata, first successful mill 1854 at Bombay.

The correct answer is C, butane and propane. The LPG supplied in household cylinders is mainly a mixture of butane and propane, two gases that turn liquid under moderate pressure. Both are saturated hydrocarbons got while refining crude oil or processing natural gas, and because they liquefy on compression, a cylinder holds far more fuel than the same volume of gas would. The gases have no smell of their own, so a strong-smelling compound called ethyl mercaptan is added to make a leak noticeable at once. LPG burns with a clean blue flame and leaves almost no residue, which makes it a far better home fuel than wood or coal. A is wrong because methane is the chief part of CNG and biogas, not of LPG. B is wrong because ethane is at most a minor component. D is wrong because hexane is a liquid at room temperature and serves as a solvent. Exam tip: LPG is butane plus propane, while CNG is mainly methane.

The correct answer is D, -40°. Only at -40 do the two scales read alike, so -40 °C and -40 °F are the very same temperature. The scales are linked by F = (9/5)C + 32. Writing C in place of F gives C = (9/5)C + 32, so -(4/5)C = 32 and C = -40. On the Celsius scale water freezes at 0° and boils at 100°, while on the Fahrenheit scale the same two points are 32° and 212°, so 100 Celsius divisions cover 180 Fahrenheit divisions. Because the two scales climb at different rates, they can agree at exactly one point, and that point lies well below both freezing marks. A is wrong because 0 °C equals 32 °F. B is wrong because -25 °C equals -13 °F. C is wrong because -37 °C comes to about -34.6 °F. Exam tip: remember the single crossing point -40 °C = -40 °F, and the freezing pair 0 °C = 32 °F.

The correct answer is D, State Bank of India. YONO, which stands for You Only Need One, was launched by the State Bank of India as a single application for banking, investment, insurance and online shopping, and it also allows cash withdrawal at the bank's machines without a card. Option A is wrong because HDFC Bank offers its own mobile banking and payment applications under different names. Option B is wrong because Punjab National Bank runs its own digital platform and is not connected with YONO. Option C is wrong because ICICI Bank has its own application as well. Questions on bank applications are answered by holding the app and the bank together as a pair, exactly as the folk forms are held with their states in another subject.

The correct answer is D, Bhanu Athaiya. She won the Academy Award for costume design in 1983 for Richard Attenborough's Gandhi, sharing it with John Mollo, and was the first Indian to win an Oscar in any category. Option A is wrong because Satyajit Ray received an honorary Academy Award for lifetime achievement in 1992, which came later and was not a competitive award. Option B is wrong because A. R. Rahman won two Academy Awards in 2009 for Slumdog Millionaire, for original score and for the song Jai Ho, again later than 1983. Option C is wrong because Guru Dutt, the director of Pyaasa and Kaagaz Ke Phool, never received an Academy Award. Resul Pookutty won for sound mixing in the same year as Rahman.

The correct answer is D, film. The Dadasaheb Phalke Award was instituted in 1969 for lifetime contribution to Indian cinema and is named after Dhundiraj Govind Phalke, who made the first Indian feature film, Raja Harishchandra, in 1913 and is called the father of Indian cinema; the first recipient was the actress Devika Rani. Option A is wrong because the highest sporting honours are the Major Dhyan Chand Khel Ratna Award and the Arjuna Award, which cover cricket along with other games. Option B is wrong because hockey is honoured through the same sports awards, and Major Dhyan Chand's name is attached to them. Option C is wrong for the same reason. Note also that the award is presented with the National Film Awards. Phalke's own films, made between 1913 and the coming of sound, were silent, so the award honours a body of work rather than a single film.

The correct answer is B, Kerala. Silent Valley National Park lies in the Palakkad district of Kerala, in the Nilgiri hills of the Western Ghats, and protects one of the last stretches of undisturbed tropical evergreen forest in the country. It is best known as a stronghold of the lion-tailed macaque, a threatened primate found only in the Western Ghats, and it was saved from a hydroelectric project by a long public campaign before being declared a national park. Option A is wrong because Tamil Nadu, though it shares the Nilgiri landscape, holds Mudumalai and Mukurthi instead. Option C is wrong because Odisha is the state of Simlipal and the Gahirmatha turtle coast. Option D is wrong because Chhattisgarh has Indravati and Kanger Valley. Tie Silent Valley to Kerala and to the lion-tailed macaque.

The correct answer is B, Tiger. Project Tiger was launched in 1973, the year after the Wildlife (Protection) Act came into force, and it was the first species recovery project of its kind in India. It began with a small group of reserves, Jim Corbett among them, and works on the principle of a strictly protected core area surrounded by a buffer in which regulated use is allowed. Option A is wrong because Gir is the forest in Gujarat that shelters the Asiatic lion and is a national park, not the name of a national project. Option C is wrong because the rhino programme, aimed at the greater one-horned rhinoceros of Assam and Bengal, came much later than 1973. Option D is wrong because the hangul, the Kashmir stag of Dachigam, has its own state level recovery effort and was never the first national project.