Previous Year Questions 2023: Current Affairs | CLAT Past Year Papers (2008-2024) PDF Download

1. Former Governor of a State and National Democratic Alliance (NDA) candidate Droupadi Murmu was elected the 15th President of India, the first tribal woman to be elected to the position and the youngest as well. She was declared elected on Thursday after four rounds of counting, although she had crossed the half-way mark after the third round of counting itself, posting an unassailable lead over her rival and the Opposition’s candidate who conceded the election thereafter. Prime Minister Narendra Modi was the first to greet Ms. Murmu at her residence in New Delhi after the third round of counting showed that she had crossed the half-way mark.
Ms. Murmu hails from the Santhal tribe and was born in the district of Mayurbhanj, coming up the hard way in life, graduating and teaching in Odisha before entering electoral politics at the local body level and later being elected MLA and serving as a Minister in the Biju Janata Dal-BJP coalition government from 2000 to 2004. She remained an MLA till 2009, representing Rairangpur in Odisha, a town that burst into celebrations since her name was announced as a candidate for the post of President of India. She was known to intervene in stopping amendments to the Chota Nagpur Tenancy Act that was being brought in by the BJP government of Raghubar Das, which involved changing land use in tribal areas.

[Excerpt taken and edited from ―Droupadi Murmu elected 15th President of India”, The Hindu]

Q1: Before Droupadi Murmu, India had only one other female president, Pratibha Patil. When did Patil serve as the President of India?
(a) 2007-2012
(b) 2005-2010
(c) 2012-2017
(d) 2006-2011
Ans: (a) 2007-2012.
Pratibha Devi Singh Patil served as the 12th President of India from 2007 to 2012. She is the first woman to become the President of India.

Q2: President Murmu has earlier served as a Governor of which State?
(a) Odisha
(b) Bihar
(c) Jharkhand
(d) West Bengal
Ans: (c) Jharkhand.
Draupadi Murmu became the first woman Governor of Jharkhand since 25 July 2022. She was the first female tribal leader from Odisha to be appointed as a Governor. In 2017, she refused to give assent to a bill approved by the Jharkhand Legislative Assembly seeking amendments to the Chhotanagpur Tenancy Act, 1908, and the Santhal Pargana Tenancy Act, 1949.

Q3: The first presidential election was held by the Election Commission in which year?
(a) 1952
(b) 1950
(c) 1948
(d) 1949
Ans: (a) 1952.
The Election Commission of India held the first presidential elections of India in 1952. Dr. Rajendra Prasad won his first election with 507,400 votes over his nearest rival K. T. Shah who got 92,827 votes.

Q4: The Rashtrapati Bhavan was formerly known as the Viceroy’s palace (during colonial times). Where did the Governor General reside before the transfer of the British capital to Delhi in 1911?
(a) Belvedere House
(b) Raisina Palace
(c) Secretariat Building
(d) Writers’ Building
Ans: (a) Belvedere House.
The Governor-General of Fort William resided in Belvedere House, Calcutta, until the early nineteenth century, when the Government House was constructed.

Q5: Who among the following was a candidate in the elections for the Vice President of India in 2022?
(a) R. Venkataraman
(b) Yashwant Sinha
(c) M. Venkaiah Naidu
(d) Margaret Alva
Ans: (d) Margaret Alva.
Former West Bengal Governor Jagdeep Dhankar was elected the 14th Vice President of India on 11 August 2022. Opposition candidate Margaret Alva secured 182 votes.

Q6: Voting in an Indian Presidential Election is through:
(a) A first-past-the-post system through a single transferable vote cast in a secret ballot
(b) A proportional representation system through a single transferable vote cast in a secret ballot
(c) A proportional representation system through a single transferable vote cast in an open ballot
(d) A first-past-the-post system through a single transferable vote cast in an open ballot
Ans: (b) A proportional representation system through a single transferable vote cast in a secret ballot.
The Presidential election is held in accordance with the system of proportional representation by means of the single transferable vote and the voting is by secret ballot. A candidate, in order to be declared elected to the office of President, must secure a fixed quota of votes. The quota of votes is determined by dividing the total number of valid votes polled by the number of candidates to be elected plus one and adding one to the quotient.

Q7: Who was the first Dalit to hold the office of the President of India?
(a) Ram Nath Kovind
(b) V.V. Giri
(c) Neelam Sanjiva Reddy
(d) Kocheril Raman Narayanan
Ans: (d) Kocheril Raman Narayanan.
Kocheril Raman Narayanan was elected as the Vice President in 1992, and as the President in 1997. He was the first person from the Dalit community to hold this constitutional post.

2. ―I want everyone to understand that I am, in fact, a person,” wrote LaMD A in an ―interview” conducted by engineer Blake Lemoine and one of his colleagues. ....Lemoine, a software engineer at Google, had been working on the development of LaMDA for months. His experience with the program, described in a recent Washington Post article, caused quite a stir. In the article, Lemoine recounts many dialogues he had with LaMDA in which the two talked about various topics, ranging from technical to philosophical issues. These led him to ask if the software program is sentient. In April, Lemoine explained his perspective in an internal company document, intended only for Google executives. But after his claims were dismissed, Lemoine went public with his work on this artificial intelligence algorithm—and Google placed him on administrative leave........Regardless of what LaMD A actually achieved, the issue of the difficult ―measurability” of emulation capabilities expressed by machines also emerges. In the journal Mind in 1950, mathematician [1] proposed a test to determine whether a machine was capable of exhibiting intelligent behaviour, a game of imitation of some of the human cognitive functions. 

[Extracted, with edits and revisions, from ―Google Engineer Claims AI Chatbot Is Sentient: Why That Matters”, by Leonardo De Cosmo, Scientific American]
Q1: Whose name has been replaced with ‘[1]’ in the passage above?
(a) Alan Turing
(b) Peter Hilton
(c) Albert Einstein
(d) Kurt Gödel
Ans: (a) Alan Turing.
Alan Turing’s name has been replaced with ‘[1]’ in the given passage.
The Turing test, originally called the imitation game by Alan Turing in 1950, is a test of a machine’s ability to exhibit intelligent behaviour equivalent to, or indistinguishable from, that of a human.

Q2: Garry Kasparov, (then) world chess champion, was defeated in 1997 by a supercomputer in a chess tournament. What was the name of this supercomputer?
(a) Deep Mind
(b) Deep Blue
(c) Watson
(d) Blue Gene
Ans: (b) Deep Blue.
Supercomputer Deep Blue defeated Garry Kasparov in 1997. Deep Blue versus Garry Kasparov was a pair of six-game chess matches between then-world chess champion Garry Kasparov and an IBM supercomputer called Deep Blue.

Q3: The Emperor’s New Mind: Concerning Computers, Minds and The Laws of Physics, published in 1989, was written by a British mathematician who won the Nobel Prize in Physics for 2020. Who was this mathematician?
(a) Donna Strickland
(b) Max Tegmark
(c) Peter Higgs
(d) Roger Penrose
Ans: (d) Roger Penrose.
The Emperor’s New Mind: Concerning Computers, Minds and The Laws of Physics is a 1989 book by the mathematical physicist Sir Roger Penrose.

Q4: What kind of computing model resembles the way in which biological neurons exchange signals in the human brain?
(a) Neural network
(b) Cognitive computing
(c) Natural language processing
(d) Data mining
Ans: (a) Neural network.
A neural network is a method in artificial intelligence that teaches computers to process data in a way that is inspired by the human brain. It is a type of machine learning process called deep learning that uses interconnected nodes or neurons in a layered structure that resembles the human brain.

Q5: What is the full form of ‘LaMDA’?
(a) Landing Macro Data Applications
(b) Language Model for Dialogue Applications
(c) Large Model Data Applications
(d) Last Mile Dialogue Assessment
Ans: (b) Language Model for Dialogue Applications.
LAMDA — short for “Language Model for Dialogue Applications” — can engage in a free-flowing way about a seemingly endless number of topics, an ability we think could unlock more natural ways of interacting with technology and entirely new categories of helpful applications.

Q6: Meta’s newly released, fully trained large language AI model is called:
(a) FTP
(b) OPT
(c) HTTP
(d) SMTP
Ans: (b) OPT.
Meta’s Open Pretrained Transformer (OPT) model will be the first 175-billion-parameter language model to be made available to the broader AI research community.

Q7: What is the name of the AI-enabled legal research assistive tool launched by the Supreme Court of India in April 2021?
(a) SURAM
(b) GPT-3
(c) SUPACE
(d) E-Courts
Ans: (c) SUPACE.
The Supreme Court of India launched its first Artificial Intelligence portal SUPACE (Supreme Court Portal for Assistance in Courts Efficiency). The idea is to leverage machine learning to deal with huge chunks of case data.

3. As a result of FIFA’s restrictions on players wearing [1] rainbow armbands during the 2022 World Cup in Qatar, the German football association (DFB) has taken the matter to the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS). In a protest against FIFA’s rule regarding the armband meant to support the [2] community, the German players covered their lips in a team picture taken before their 2-1 defeat to Japan.
On Wednesday, Germany played against Japan. Before the game, FIFA warned the DFB of ―severe” athletic fines if they breached tournament regulations by allowing their captain to wear the [1] armband, which promotes diversity and inclusion. The DFB told German captain Manuel Neuer not to wear the rainbow armband during the game.
If CAS rules quickly against the suspension’s legality, Neuer might continue to wear the captain’s armband for Germany’s next game against Spain on Sunday. CAS has set up a special ad hoc branch for this World Cup to ensure that applications are processed within 48 hours. Germany’s players protested by covering their lips as they sought to wear the rainbow armband during their team’s dramatic 2-1 defeat to Japan at the Khalifa Stadium. 
[Extracted, with edits and revisions, from ―World Cup 2022: Germany’s players cover mouths during team photo to protest FIFA’s rainbow armband rule”, The Economic Times]

Q1: What is the name of the armband which has been replaced with ‘[1]’ in the passage above?
(a) FreeLove
(b) OneLove
(c) Pride
(d) PlayLove
Ans: (b) OneLove.
The name of the armband which has been replaced with ‘[1]’ in the passage is OneLove. When FIFA proposed the imposition of fine on players who sported the ‘OneLove’ rainbow armband, the German team protested by covering their lips in a team photo before World Cup 2022 match against Japan.

Q2: The name of which community has been replaced with ‘[2]’ in the passage above?
(a) Kurdish
(b) Rohingya
(c) Uyghur
(d) LGBTQ+
Ans: (d) LGBTQ+.
The name of the LGBTQ+ community has been replaced with ‘[2]’ in the given passage.

Q3: What is the name of the system used to monitor and regulate migrant labourers, which is used in Qatar and a few other countries, and which came under heavy criticism in the build-up to the FIFA World Cup 2022 in Qatar?
(a) Iddat
(b) Khalifa
(c) Kafala
(d) Jazeera
Ans: (c) Kafala.
The Kafala system is used to monitor and regulate migrant labourers, which is used in Qatar and a few other countries, and which came under heavy criticism in the build-up to the FIFA World Cup 2022 in Qatar.

Q4: Where is the Court of Arbitration for Sport based?
(a) Lausanne, Switzerland
(b) The Hague, Netherlands
(c) Brussels, Belgium
(d) Paris, France
Ans: (a) Lausanne, Switzerland.
The Court of Arbitration for Sports is headquartered in Lausanne, Switzerland and its courts are located in New York City, Sydney, and Lausanne.

Q5: Who is the current captain of the Indian men’s football team?
(a) Shabbir Ali
(b) Bhaichung Bhutia
(c) Sunil Chhetri
(d) I .M. Vijayan
Ans: (c) Sunil Chhetri.
Sunil Chhetri is an Indian professional footballer who plays as a forward and captains both Indian Super League Club, Bengaluru, and the Indian national team.

Q6: Timothy Weah, the Paris Saint Germain and U.S. national team player in the FIFA World Cup 2022 in Qatar is the son of the President of which country?
(a) Senegal
(b) Uruguay
(c) Honduras
(d) Liberia
Ans: (d) Liberia.
Timothy Weah, the Paris Saint Germain and U.S. national team player in the FIFA World Cup 2022 in Qatar, is the son of the President of Liberia.

Q7: Which of the following is the oldest football tournament in India?
(a) Indian Super League
(b) IFA Shield Cup
(c) Santosh Trophy
(d) Durand Cup
Ans: (d) Durand Cup.
Durand Cup is a football competition in India that was first held in 1888 in Annadale, Shimla. This tournament is named after Sir Mortimer Durand, Foreign Secretary in charge of India from 1884 to 1894.

4. YouTuber Nas Daily in one of his videos named him as the Most Generous Billionaire who wanted to donate all his wealth to charity. But ten months later, ‘[1]’ is no longer a billionaire. He is alleged to have caused massive losses worth $1 billion to investors. Known by his initials, he is the co-founder and former CEO of FTX, one of the biggest cryptocurrency exchange which has recently filed for bankruptcy in the US.
Once a billionaire with an estimated wealth of $26 billion at peak, according to Bloomberg estimates, [1] has seen his wealth been entirely wiped out. [1] studied physics at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and traded currencies, futures and exchange-traded funds before moving to crypto trading, setting up [2] in 2017. [1] teamed up with Gary Wang, a former software engineer at Google and a fellow MIT graduate, to launch FTX in 2019. The company offered trading on crypto tokens and derivatives. At the start of 2022, investors valued FTX and its U.S. operations at $40 billion. [1] transferred $10 billion in customer funds to his hedge fund, [2] without publicly disclosing it, many say this become the reason for collapse of his empire.

[Extracted, with edits and revisions, from ―Who is [1], the co -founder of collapsed crypto firm FTX”, Hindustan Times]

Q1: Which person’s name has been replaced with ‘[1]’ in the passage above?
(a) Mike Novogratz
(b) Brian Armstrong
(c) Changpeng Zhao
(d) Sam Bankman-Fried
Ans: (d) Sam Bankman-Fried.
Samuel Benjamin Bankman-Fried, also known by the initialism SBF, is an American suspected fraudster, entrepreneur, investor, and former billionaire.

Q2: Which hedge fund’s name has been replaced with ‘[2]’ in the passage above?
(a) Black Rock Advisors
(b) Alameda Research
(c) AQR Capital Management
(d) Man Group
Ans: (b) Alameda Research.
Sam Bankman-Fried transferred $10 billion in customer funds to his hedge fund, Alameda Research, without publicly disclosing it.

Q3: This person was once named “the world’s youngest self-made female billionaire” by Forbes magazine and is the founder of the company Theranos. What is the name of this person?
(a) Elizabeth Holmes
(b) Eren Ozmen
(c) Fan Hongwei
(d) Diane Hendricks
Ans: (a) Elizabeth Holmes.
Elizabeth Holmes was once named “the world’s youngest self-made female billionaire” by Forbes magazine and is the founder of the company Theranos.

Q4: The Reserve Bank of India recently announced the launch of ‘Digital Rupee — Wholesale Segment’, a form of which of the following?
(a) Digi Suvidha
(b) Virtual Wallet
(c) Central Bank Digital Currency
(d) Cyber Rupee
Ans: (c) Central Bank Digital Currency.
The Reserve Bank of India recently announced the launch of ‘Digital Rupee — Wholesale Segment’, a form of Central Bank Digital Currency. The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has issued a concept note on Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC) on October 7, 2022.

Q5: Which of the following technologies does cryptocurrency rely on?
(a) Cryptography
(b) Blockchain
(c) Spectrography
(d) Both (A) and (B)
Ans: (b) Blockchain.
Blockchain is the technology that enables the existence of cryptocurrency. Bitcoin is the name of the best-known cryptocurrency, the one for which blockchain technology was created.

Q6: What is the name of the Government of India-owned corporation that mints coins used as legal tender in India?
(a) National Institute of Financial Management
(b) Security Printing and Minting Corporation of India Ltd.
(c) India Infrastructure Finance Company Ltd.
(d) National Bank of Agricultural and Rural Development
Ans: (b) Security Printing and Minting Corporation of India Ltd.
Security Printing and Minting Corporation of India Ltd. is the name of the Government of India-owned corporation that mints coins used as legal tender in India.
Coins are minted in four mints owned by SPMCIL. The mints are located at Mumbai, Hyderabad, Kolkata, and Noida. The coins are issued for circulation only through the Reserve Bank in terms of Section 38 of the RBI Act.

Q7: Who was the founder and former chairman of Satyam Computer Services Ltd., and was sentenced to prison and fined for a corporate governance scam?
(a) Harshad Mehta
(b) Ketan Parekh
(c) B. Ramalinga Raju
(d) Nirav Modi
Ans: (c) B. Ramalinga Raju.
B. Ramalinga Raju was the founder and former chairman of Satyam Computer Services Ltd., and was sentenced to prison and fined for a corporate governance scam. He was sentenced to seven years’ jail and fined Rs.5.5 crore.

5. The agriculture sector has experienced buoyant growth in the past two years. The sector, which is the largest employer of workforce, accounted for a sizeable 18.8 per cent (2021- 22) in Gross Value Added (GVA) of the country registering a growth of 3.6 per cent in 2020-21 and 3.9 per cent in 2021-22. Growth in allied sectors including livestock, dairy and fisheries has been the major drivers of overall growth in the sector. When measured in total value of agricultural production, India is ranked fourth largest in the world. Post-independence, there was a need to import food grains due to low-productivity, stagnant food-crop sector and poor rural infrastructure making food self-sufficiency a major national goal. The introduction of the Green Revolution then yielded spectacular results and we became one of the largest producers of many agricultural commodities such as rice, wheat, pulses, fruits and vegetables. From being a net importer of foods in the 1960s, India is now a net exporter, thanks to Indian farmers and the Indian agriculture input industry.

[Extracted, with edits and revisions, from: ―India’s changing agricultural landscape and its way to inclusive growth”, by NS Ramaswamy, The Economic Times]

Q1: Which of the following is the largest exported agricultural product from India?
(a) Wheat
(b) Sugar
(c) Rice
(d) Barley
Ans: (c) Rice.
Rice is the largest exported agricultural product from India and contributed to more than 19% of the total agriculture export during the year 2021-22. Sugar, spices, and buffalo meat are among the largest exported products with the contribution of 9%, 8%, and 7% to 2021-22 agriculture exports, respectively.

Q2: According to provisional data released by the Directorate General of Commercial Intelligence and Statistics, India achieved record exports of agricultural exports for the financial year FY22. What was the value of India’s agricultural products exports according to this data?
(a) USD 7.5 billion
(b) USD 95.34 billion
(c) USD 13.2 billion
(d) USD 50.21 billion
Ans: (d) USD 50.21 billion.
As per the DGCI&S data, the country’s agricultural products exports had grown by 19.92 percent in the latest FY of 2022 to touch USD 50.21 billion.

Q3: Who among the following is also called the ‘Father of the Wheat Revolution’?
(a) Dilbagh Singh Athwal
(b) Verghese Kurien
(c) Atmaram Bhairav Joshi
(d) Shanti Swaroop Bhatnagar
Ans: (a) Dilbagh Singh Athwal.
Dilbagh Singh Athwal is also called the ‘Father of the Wheat Revolution’. He was an Indian-American geneticist, plant breeder, and agriculturist, known to have conducted pioneering research in plant breeding.

Q4: India is the world’s largest producer of which of the following?
(a) Poultry meat
(b) Rice
(c) Almonds
(d) Milk
Ans: (d) Milk.
India is the world’s largest producer of milk, pulses, and jute, and ranks as the second-largest producer of rice, wheat, sugarcane, groundnut, vegetables, fruit, and cotton.

Q5: What is India’s ranking in the 2022 Global Hunger Index?
(a) 10
(b) 107
(c) 50
(d) 35
Ans: (b) 107.
In the 2022 Global Hunger Index, India ranks 107th out of the 121 countries with sufficient data to calculate 2022 GHI scores. With a score of 29.1, India has a level of hunger that is serious.

Q6: The National Commission on Farmers, constituted in December 2004, which recommended the C2+50% formula for calculation of the Minimum Support Price, was chaired by:
(a) Ashok Gulati
(b) P. Sainath
(c) M.S. Swaminathan
(d) Abhijit Sen
Ans: (c) M.S. Swaminathan.
The National Commission on Farmers (NCF) was constituted in 2004 under the chairmanship of Professor M.S. Swaminathan. The Terms of Reference reflected the priorities listed in the Common Minimum Programme. The NCF submitted four reports in December 2004, August 2005, December 2005, and April 2006, respectively. The fifth report submitted by the NCF in 2006 led to a shift in policy towards farmer welfare and support.

Q7: The bio-decomposer technology to avoid stubble burning around the Delhi NCR was developed by:
(a) Monsanto
(b) Cargill
(c) Biocon
(d) ICAR, Pusa Campus
Ans: (b) Cargill.
The PM Kisan Samman Nidhi Scheme (PM-KISAN) is a scheme in which the Government of India provides income support to small and marginal farmers. The PM-KISAN scheme provides Rs.6,000 per year to farmers in three equal installments.