General Knowledge Section – CLAT 2013


1. Which sport is Sushil Kumar related to? Wrestling
2. Which sport is Vijay Kumar related to? Shooting
3. Venezuela’s President who passed away recently? Hugo Chavez
4. Carlos Slim is from which country? Mexico
5.Name the first man to land on the moon. Neil Armstrong
 6. When is the International Women’s Day celebrated? 8th March
7. Which year was declared to be the International Biodiversity Year? 2010
8. Miss World – 2012? Yu Wenxia (China)
9. Last British Emperor to rule India? George VI
10. ‘Bluetooth’ was named after? Harald Bluetooth – Scandinavian King of Denmark
11. What does P stand for in P. Chidambaram? Palaniappan
12. In which area of Hyderabad did the bomb blasts take place recently? Dilsukhnagar
13. Chandrayaan 1 was launched on which vehicle? PSLV C11
14.Where are the next Summer Olympics and FIFA World Cup being organized? Brazil
15. Where was the Non Alignment Movement meeting held? Tehran
16. Oscar Pistorius allegedly murdered his girlfriend.  What’s her name? Reeva Steenkamp
17. Chairman of the Fundamental Rights Sub Committee? J B Kriplani
18. New pope is from which country? Argentina
19. What is current deficit rate of India? 5%
20. What is the formula of potential energy? U=mgh
21. Vishwanathan Anand defeated Borus Gelfand . Which country is he from? Israel
22. Which year was Padma Shri first given? 1954
23. Where were the relics of Buddha transferred to? Sri Lanka
24. What five year plan covered 2007-12? 11th
25. Environment Act was passed in which year? 1986
26. When is World Literacy Day? 8th September
27. Which American State was previously known as “New Amsterdam”? New York
28. Who wrote “Paradise Lost”? John Milton
29. Who was the founder of the Red Cross Society? Henry Dunant
30. Light Year is a measure of? Distance
31. Where are the Administrative Headquarters of the EU? Brussels, Belgium
32. How many High Courts does India have? 24
33. The Boundries of which states do not touch? Meghalaya and Manipur
34. How many medals did India win at the Olympics? Six
35. In which year was India’s capital shifted to Delhi? 1911
36. When di Kumbh Mela start this year? 14th January
37.Which river is the Baghlihar Dam on? Chenab
38. Which is the wealthiest Temple in India? Padmanabswamy Temple
39. Kuchipudi is the native dance form of which state? Andhra Pradesh
 40. Which state is the POSCO steel plant in? Odisha
41. Which actor was caught in controversy with his movie Vishwaroopam? Kamal Hassan
42. What does the 117th Amendment to the Constitution deal with? Reservation in promotions for SC/STs
43. In which country did Norman Borlaung develop his ideas to improve food production ? Mexico
44. Paleolithic Age is commonly known as? Old stone age
45. Name the first Shaka ruler of India. Maues
46. Recently, Supreme Court ordered the ambassador of which country not to leave India? Italy
47. The Leaning Tower of Pisa doesn’t fall because? Because its center of gravity is not outside the center of support.
48. Under which ruler, were the English granted the Diwani rights in Bengal and Bihar? Shah Alam II
49. Which Indian State has the lowest sex ratio? Haryana 
50. Who founded the Navjivan Trust for peaceful struggle for Swaraj? Mahatma Gandhi


  1. Q. Which American State was formally known as ‘New Amsterdam’? – New york

    Q. Who wrote the book’ A Paradise Lost’ ?

  2. hq of EU?
    which day is celebrated as literacy day?
    how many high courts are there in india?
    boundaries of which 2 states do not touch? cg up, j&k haryana, manippur mizoram, rajasthan punjab (not so sure abt options)
    also there was 1 ques. on posco steel plant

  3. I’m not absolutely sure, but the state boundaries question did not have J&K and Haryana as options (it was J&K and H&P), and the answer may have been Meghalaya and Manipur. The Plan which goes from 2007 to 2012 was the 11th Fiver Year Plan, not the 12th. Harald Blatand (after whom Bluetooth was named) was in fact, Danish (which was an option).

    Thanks for compiling the answers.
    It tells me how much I sucked. 😛

  4. Whoops, just checked. Bluetooth actually did rule over Norway for a bit, so I guess it would be more appropriate to label him a Scandinavian king (though I don’t believe that was an option, I may be wrong). There was also a question about the first king of the Shaka dynasty, which as Moga or something. The poem asked was ‘Paradise Regained’, which was written by Milton as well. The Chavez question actually asked the country to which he belonged.

    And in my previous response, I should’ve written HP instead of H&P. >_>

  5. when was the capital of india shifted frm kolkata to delhi?the current pope is frm which country?when did the mahAkumbh mela started this year?on which river baghlihar dam is dere?

    • Capital of India was shifted from Kolkata to Delhi in 1911 .the current pope Is from Argentina . The mahakumbh mela started on the 14th of jan and the baghilar dam is built on the river Chenab

  6. the maths section was horrible! I cud attempt only 7! 🙁 and two of the questions were wrong in maths!! wrong in the sense that the correct answer was not an there in any of the four options! :-/

    • i think 2 math questions were wrong too… one percentage question and i forget the other.. correct me if im wrong.. did anyone else think a maths question was wrong?

  7. Q. In which country did Norman Borlaung develop his ideas to improve food production (or some variant of that)?
    A. Mexico

  8. Gagan narang question wasn’t there.
    117th amendment
    last ruler of India
    fundamental right committee on human rights (constitution)
    paleolithic age common name-old stone age

  9. Q33 the options didn’t have Jammu Kashmir and Haryana, it was a. Meghalaya and Manipur b. Jammu Kashmir and himachal c. Rajasthan Punjab d. UP and chhatisgarh

    So answer is Meghalaya maniour

    • Anything around 28 must be considered a good score. If you’ve to Google for a lot many questions now it’s obvious that the GK was very tough.
      Who’d have heard about the origin of blue tooth?
      Who’d know about the sub committee on fundamental rights?
      Who’d know about the deficit percentage?
      Who’d have heard about this great Maues?
      And apart from sb from J&K could sb really know about Bagalihar dam?
      These and many more were simply undoables.
      If sb has done well in other sections no need to feel despondent

  10. I calculated my CLAT 2013 marks as 75 🙁 can I get HNLU Raipur..
    and if not then can I again give CLAT while doing Engineering or law from some other college ..

    • You can if you are less than 20 years as on 1st of July 2014. Whether you want to give it while studying in college or take a year off exclusively to study for clat is purely your volition. It wouldn’t be discerning to speculate about the cut-offs now, but sorry to say that things don’t look bright for you this time, mate. It’s just my opinion I might be wrong.

  11. @Osho- Different papers had different options. I had Jharkand and HP as one of the options, which obviously brought the question down to a no-brainer

  12. some questions were differently asked in my my set it was asked to which country hugo chavez belongs to ?.but overall dey r same questions.

  13. Overall, from reactions and analysis, this appears to have been an old fashioned exam for a rounded personality who over her eighteen years read some Grisham and Perry Mason, may be watched few Legal serials and was encouraged enough to start reading Keshavanand Bharti and Golaknath and kept with a grinding grounding in the English language.And of course interest in trivia as well as some acquaintance with the Blind poet who wrote Paradise lost for a royalty of Ten pounds which even in 1660s was a small amount for a work like this.Which will of course take her to Marx and wonder whether this was a productive activity.

    Who’d have heard about the origin of blue tooth?
    Who’d know about the sub committee on fundamental rights?
    Who’d know about the deficit percentage?
    Who’d have heard about this great Maues?
    These and many more were simply undoables.
    If sb has done well in other sections

    • Actually, anyone who did even a bit of research after playing age of empires 2 would have got bluetooth.. it comes in the Normandy campaign, where Norman the Conqueror is assisted by Herald Bluetooth. Bluetooth was a great navigator and all, so get it? telecom, trade etc? And JB Kriplani was an obvious answer because you could eliminate all the others!

      • For that matter sb deeply interested in history might have stumbled onto Maues at some point of time and might have got it right. That’s not the point. I actually meant that someone depending on the regular reading of newspapers, NCERT books, clatgyan compendiums , other GK guides etc couldn’t do these questions.
        But then, there are toppers. If you got them right, great!

      • Not many of us do a bit of research after playing video games in the hope of expanding our GK trivia or for whatever reason. For an overwhelming majority I think it was rather frustrating to see this question sitting there.

    • I don’t remember if Vallabhbhai Patel was an option. If he was then Kriplani may not be the actual answer because he was the chairman of The fundamental rights sub-committee while Patel was the chairman of the advisory committee on fundamental rights, minorities and tribal and excluded areas (

  15. As far as I remember, in my set, one of the questions asked was the ‘International year of sustainable development’ and not Biodiversity :/

  16. The question was where is Hugo Chavez from. The answer is Venezuela. They mentioned that he was elected as the President of his country for the fourth time and that he died recently. I remember that Cuba was amongst the options.

  17. I used to get a good 30-40 in my mocks. I’m heartbroken :'(
    How does a score of 110-120 look? Do I have any chances?

  18. so with negative markings and everything, the cutoffs will go down..what is the expected cutoff for bangalore?

  19. The cut off in my opinion could be predicted only if you have data on the performance of a sizeable number of candidates. You couldn’t do it with a mathematical juggelery. No point in getting deluded by these predictions, really.

    • Absolutely. I see people already debating cutoffs everywhere. I mean, people’ll say what they want to say. There’s really no point guessing and making conjectures as to what’ll happen. No amount of rumination or retrospection will make anything right. What’ll happen will happen.

  20. I didn’t get this… In my set (D), we didn’t get the Gagan Narang and Sushil Kumar questions… We got something else but I just don’t get how the CLAT guys could give different GK questions in the the different sets.

    The Gagan and Sushil were super easy and most kids would’ve known them but I think we got questions which were quite different… Disappointing…

  21. this question is from the math section.
    the question regarding the area of a rhombus were the options given right?

  22. Many sites have suggested that a decent score must be around 38 to 40.
    If I had one more year to prepare exclusively for GK I would still fail to answer the following

    1. The first shaka king
    2. The deficit percentage
    3. Pistorius’ girl friend
    4. The country where Borlaug first experimented
    5. Red cross founder
    6. The year when the bharat ratna awArds began
    7. The exact place of bombing in Hyderabad
    8. New York’s old name
    9. Blue tooth
    10. Fundamental rights sub committee chairman
    11. Last English ruler of India
    12. P in P Chidambaram
    13. The year when the environment act was passed.

    These questions are not the normal GK questions that most of the candidates prepare for. They are rather just trivia, and if our careers were not at stake, we would term them greatly interesting. Even Chidambaram would be surprised if someone on were to tell him that he knew about the P in his name. You could go through 1000 questions constitution in Lexis-Nexis ultimate guide for clat and would still not come across the sub committee on fundamental rights. The two science questions Potential energy and Pisa I have not included because I’m a science student; otherwise they are tough enough.

    It was a strange mix, to say the least. Very, very strange. One site says 40+ would be a cracking score. That leaves me speechless.

  23. And two more could be added

    14. Bagalihar dam- I was listening to a you tube commentary on the clat analysis – they could not even pronounce Bagalihar properly.
    15. 2010, year of biodiversity. And 2009? We must be aware of 2013, May be 2012 as well. But 2010?

  24. Two more gems

    16 . Under which ruler the civil and diwani rights were granted to English (to be answered only by a pucca history student)

    17. Navjeevan trust founder.

  25. Asad sir, can u please tell me as to what role does a ‘preference list(the one we fill while completing the admission form)’ play….
    My family is inclined towards Punjab… i ended up filling ‘RGNUL, Patiala’ at the 4th place…!!
    Is there a remedy to it?

    By the way when are the results expected to be out??

  26. Asad sir, the day of reckoning is approaching. Pl tell us why it’d be okay if we fail to get the results we are expecting.
