SSC CGL 2025 Tier-I · 21 September 2025, Shift 3 · General Awareness · Question 12 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 11 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.

Fill in the blank: The Government of India Act 1919 created a bicameral central legislature with the Council of State and the ____.

(a)Central Legislative Assembly
(b)Imperial Council
(c)Council of Princes
(d)Chamber of Deputies

Answer

Why

Correct — A. The Government of India Act 1919 made the central legislature bicameral. Its upper house was the Council of State and its lower house the Legislative Assembly, usually called the Central Legislative Assembly.

It was the first time the central legislature had two houses → option (a).

Why the others are wrong

(b)
Imperial Council — The Imperial Legislative Council was the older, single-chamber central legislature that the 1919 Act replaced with two houses. It came before, not alongside, the Council of State.
(c)
Council of Princes — There was a Chamber of Princes (Narendra Mandal), a separate consultative forum for princely rulers that first met in 1921. It was not a house of the central legislature.
(d)
Chamber of Deputies — Chamber of Deputies is the name of lower houses abroad, such as Italy's. No legislature of British India carried that name.

Concept

The 1919 Act put the Montagu–Chelmsford Reforms into law, and it changed both levels of government.

In the provinces it introduced dyarchy: 'transferred' subjects went to Indian ministers answerable to the legislature, while 'reserved' subjects stayed with the Governor.

At the centre it created the two-house legislature, with the Council of State above and the Legislative Assembly below.

The two houses are the structural forerunners of today's Rajya Sabha (upper) and Lok Sabha (lower), which is a quick way to fix which was which.

Key facts

The Government of India Act 1919 introduced bicameralism and direct elections at the centre.
Its upper house was the Council of State and its lower house the Legislative Assembly.
It introduced dyarchy in the provinces, dividing subjects into transferred and reserved.
The Act came into force in 1921.

Study next

The Government of India Act 1935 and provincial autonomyThe Simon Commission, set up to review the 1919 reformsThe Indian Councils Act 1909 and separate electorates

Common traps

Writing 'Imperial Legislative Council' because it was the central legislature before 1919: the Act turned it into two houses with new names.
Mixing up the 1919 Act with the Rowlatt Act of the same year: one reformed the legislature, the other allowed detention without trial.

Here the 1919 Act is asked through the structure it created. The same Act is a distractor at 18 Sep 2024, 16:00, GA Q.19, which keys the 1935 Act for provincial autonomy, and the year's other Act, the Rowlatt Act, is asked at 25 Sep 2024, 16:00, GA Q.5.

Related PYQs

No directly related past PYQ was found.

Topic: History — all 154 SSC CGL questions on it, every solved shift.