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50 free Indian Constitution trivia questions with answers — history quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
India's Constitution is the longest any sovereign state has ever written, and it was produced by hand: an assembly of indirectly elected members argued for the best part of a thousand days, then had the result lettered, illustrated and photolithographed before it could become law. Its makers borrowed openly from a dozen other countries and still built something that has been amended more than a hundred times without being replaced. These 50 questions go past the headline dates. They cover how the Constituent Assembly was formed and who stayed away, the features taken from other constitutions, the fundamental rights and the one that was demoted, the schedules and what each protects, amendments by number, the 3 kinds of emergency, the offices the text creates, and the Supreme Court rulings that redrew the limits of Parliament's power. Each answer comes with a one-line explanation that adds something the textbook leaves out. It suits UPSC and state-exam aspirants checking their polity, civics teachers setting a classroom round, and anyone who has wondered what the Preamble actually commits the country to.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Article 1 gives India a second, coequal name in the phrase that declares it 'shall be a Union of States'. Which name?
Bharat
Bharat stands beside India in the very first article, a Sanskrit name the framers chose over Hindustan after a heated Constituent Assembly debate.
Q 02How long did the Constituent Assembly take to finish the Constitution, at a total cost of about 6.4 million rupees?
2 years 11 months
2 years 11 months and 18 days covered the whole job, from the first sitting on 9 December 1946 to the day the Assembly adopted the Constitution, 26 November 1949.
Q 03Which British statute, drafted mainly by Samuel Hoare, provided the basis for the Constitution adopted in 1949?
Government of India Act
The Government of India Act of 1935 was so long that Parliament only outdid it with the Greater London Authority Act in 1999, and chunks of it still sit in the statutes of India, Pakistan and Bangladesh.
Q 04Which of the emergencies the President may proclaim, the one provided for by Article 360, has never once been declared?
Financial emergency
Financial emergency would let the President cut the salaries of every government official, judges included, yet no guidelines for invoking it have ever been written.
Q 05Article 343 names Hindi in which script as the Union's official language, a choice that split the Constituent Assembly?
Devanagari
Devanagari Hindi won by a whisker, and the deal that carried it kept English on for official work for fifteen years, a clock that ran out in 1965.
Q 06Which fundamental right did the 44th Amendment strip from Part III in 1978, leaving it a legal right under Article 300A?
Property
Property had been guaranteed by Articles 19 and 31 until the Janata government demoted it, so the state can now acquire land by ordinary law rather than constitutional amendment.
Q 07Which numbered Penal Code section on 'unnatural offences' did Navtej Singh Johar v Union of India read down in 2018?
377
Section 377 dated from 1860, and the unanimous bench left it standing only for sex with minors, non-consensual acts and bestiality.
Q 08Which country's attack across the Himalayas in 1962 prompted India's first national emergency under Article 352?
China
China's invasion led President Radhakrishnan to proclaim an emergency that outlasted the 1965 war with Pakistan and was lifted only in 1968.
Q 09Which state's elected Communist government was dismissed under Article 356 in 1959, an early use of President's rule?
Kerala
Kerala had voted in one of the first elected Communist ministries anywhere only two years earlier, and Nehru's government removed it after months of street protests.
Q 10The 103rd Amendment of 2019 reserved what share of seats and posts for 'economically weaker sections'?
10%
The 10% carve-out was the first reservation based on income rather than caste, and it cleared the Lok Sabha 323 votes to 3 in a single day.
Q 11Which amendment, passed in December 1988, lowered the voting age for Lok Sabha and assembly elections from 21 to 18?
61st
The 61st Amendment was introduced as the Sixty-second Amendment Bill in December 1988 and took its final number only when it became an Act in March 1989.
Q 12Which writ against unlawful imprisonment did the Supreme Court let the Emergency suspend in the 1976 ADM Jabalpur case?
Habeas corpus
Habeas corpus lost four to one in 1976, and the lone dissenter, H. R. Khanna, was passed over for Chief Justice the following year in retaliation.
Q 13What minimum age does Article 58 set for a presidential candidate, ten years above the Lok Sabha's 25?
35
35 is the floor, and Article 57 sets no ceiling on terms either: a President may stand for re-election as often as the electoral college will have them.
Q 21Which numbered article asks the state to 'endeavour to secure' a uniform civil code, as Uttarakhand did in 2024?
44
Article 44 sat unused for 74 years as a 'dead letter' despite repeated Supreme Court reminders, and Goa's Portuguese-era code was the only working example.
Q 22Which body, set up by the 99th Amendment to replace the collegium in picking judges, was struck down in 2015?
National Judicial Appointments Commission
The National Judicial Appointments Commission lasted six months: in force from April 2015, it was voided in October by a 4–1 bench that revived the judges-pick-judges collegium.
Q 23From which country's constitution did India borrow residuary powers for the centre and a strong central government?
Q 14How many Rajya Sabha members may the President nominate for distinction in art, literature, science or social service?
12
The 12 nominees sit and vote like any member, except in presidential elections, where Article 54 limits the electoral college to elected members.
Q 15Within how many days must the Rajya Sabha return a money bill certified by the Speaker, or see it deemed passed?
14
14 days is all the upper house gets, and it may only recommend changes, which is why the 2016 Aadhaar law was pushed through as a money bill.
Q 16Which 1992 amendment gave panchayats constitutional status, adding Part IX and reserving a third of seats for women?
73rd
The 73rd Amendment took effect on 24 April 1993 and handed village councils 29 subjects listed in a new Eleventh Schedule, from drinking water to libraries.
Q 17Which party, demanding a separate state, boycotted the Constituent Assembly's first sitting on 9 December 1946?
Muslim League
The Muslim League had won 73 of the 296 provincial seats and stayed away until partition; 28 of its members then joined India's Assembly while the rest sat in Pakistan's.
Q 18Which prime minister moved the First Amendment in 1951, adding 'reasonable restrictions' to free speech?
Jawaharlal Nehru
Jawaharlal Nehru amended the Constitution barely sixteen months after it took effect, irritated that courts had struck down press censorship and a Madras caste quota.
Q 19Which numbered article abolishes 'untouchability' and makes practising it in any form an offence punishable by law?
17
Article 17 is one of the few fundamental rights enforceable against private citizens, not just the state, and Parliament backed it with the Protection of Civil Rights Act in 1955.
Q 20Which numbered article, now read to cover privacy, livelihood and a clean environment, protects life and liberty?
21
Article 21 is a single 18-word sentence, yet the Supreme Court has stretched 'procedure established by law' into a due-process guarantee since 1978.
Canada
Canada also supplied the idea that the centre appoints state governors, which is why an Indian governor serves at the President's pleasure rather than by election.
Q 24From which country's constitution did India copy the suspension of fundamental rights during a declared emergency?
Germany
Germany's Weimar constitution was the model, the same emergency clause Hitler used in 1933, and India's version was invoked in full between 1975 and 1977.
Q 25From which country's constitution did India take 'procedure established by law', rejecting American 'due process'?
Japan
Japan's 1947 constitution supplied the wording, which B. N. Rau urged on the Assembly in 1948 because 'due process' would hamper social legislation and hand judges too much power.
Q 26From which country did India borrow the Fundamental Duties added under Article 51A in 1976, and a planning commission?
Soviet Union
The Soviet Union was the model for duties ranging from respecting the flag to developing 'scientific temper', inserted on the advice of the Swaran Singh Committee during the Emergency.
Q 27From which country's constitution did India borrow its procedure for amending the Constitution under Article 368?
South Africa
South Africa also lent the method of electing Rajya Sabha members, and the amendment procedure it inspired has been used more than a hundred times since 1950.
Q 28Which schedule, added by the First Amendment in 1951 to protect land reforms, puts statutes beyond judicial review?
Ninth
The Ninth Schedule began with 13 zamindari-abolition acts, and a 1981 ruling shielded everything added before the 1973 basic-structure case while leaving later entries open to review.
Q 29Which subject moved from the State List to the Concurrent List in 1976, so Parliament could legislate on schools?
Education
Education moved along with forests and wildlife during the Emergency, which is why a central Right to Education Act could bind every state in 2009.
Q 30Which 1967 ruling by eleven judges barred Parliament from curtailing Fundamental Rights, until the 24th Amendment?
Golaknath
Golaknath turned on a Punjab family's farmland, and the bench that decided it was the largest the Supreme Court had assembled until the 13 judges of 1973.