SSC CGL 2025 Tier-I · 16 September 2025, Shift 1 · General Awareness · Question 1 of 100

We transcribed this text from the pictures on a candidate's response sheet for this shift; the answer is the key SSC colour-marked on that sheet. Solution last reviewed 13 September 2026.

Where this paper and its answers come from

SSC does not publish CGL question papers or a public answer key. From 2025 the candidate response sheet prints every question and option as a picture, so the text here is transcribed from those pictures for this shift and checked against them independently; where the layout carries meaning, the picture is shown as well. Each answer is the key SSC colour-marked on that sheet. SSC released a tentative key for challenge and later its final one, both only to candidates behind a login, and the sheet does not say which of the two it carries. The solutions are written by UnlockIAS.

What feature was used on Golconda Fort’s gates to protect it during attacks involving war elephants?

(a)Deep moat with water channels
(b)Electrified spikes
(c)Steel spikes on doors
(d)Stone cannon towers

Answer

Why

Correct — C. Golconda's outer gate, the Fateh Darwaza (Victory Gate), is studded with giant spikes so that war elephants could not batter it down.

The spikes kept an elephant's head off the door, and that is the defence the key names: spikes on the doors → option (c).

Why the others are wrong

(a)
Deep moat with water channels — A moat guards the approach to a fort, not the door itself. The question asks what was fixed on the gates, and at Golconda that was spikes.
(b)
Electrified spikes — Electrified spikes are an anachronism. The gate is named for Aurangzeb's army marching in through it, a 17th-century event, long before electricity could power a defence.
(d)
Stone cannon towers — Cannon towers would stand on the walls, not on the gates the stem asks about. The defence against elephants was fixed to the doors themselves.

Concept

Golconda Fort is in Hyderabad, Telangana. It began as a mud fort of the Kakatiya period, and the first three sultans of the Qutb Shahi dynasty expanded it into its present form over 62 years.

Its outermost enclosure is entered by the Fateh Darwaza, the Victory Gate, named after Aurangzeb's army, which marched in through it. The gate is studded with giant iron spikes against elephants.

Descriptions of the Fateh Darwaza call its spikes iron, while option (c) says steel. The keyed option still names the right device: spikes on the doors.

Key facts

Golconda Fort's Fateh Darwaza (Victory Gate) is studded with giant iron spikes to keep elephants from battering it down.
The gate is named after Aurangzeb's army, which marched into the fort through it.
The first three Qutb Shahi sultans expanded an earlier mud fort into the present Golconda over 62 years.
Golconda Fort is on UNESCO's World Heritage tentative list with the Qutb Shahi Tombs and the Charminar, in an entry submitted in 2010.

Study next

Qutb Shahi monuments of Hyderabad: Golconda Fort, the Qutb Shahi tombs and the CharminarThe Deccan sultanates that followed the Bahmani kingdomAurangzeb's Deccan campaigns

Common traps

Picking the moat because it sounds like standard fort defence. The question asks what was fixed on the gates.
Rejecting (c) because descriptions of the gate say iron, not steel. The device, spikes on the doors, is what is tested.

Here a monument is tested through one defensive feature, with a plausible fort defence (the moat) and an anachronism (electrified spikes) as the distractors.

Related PYQs

No directly related past PYQ was found.

Topic: Culture — all 246 SSC CGL questions on it, every solved shift.