General Awareness with special reference to Banking and Jammu & Kashmir
General Awareness with special reference to Banking and Jammu & Kashmir
This section rewards precise recall of institutions, regulators, schemes, banking law and J&K-specific facts. It is not a current-affairs dump: questions tend to be static, such as which Act governs banking, what the RBI does, and where J&K Bank was founded.
Banking facts to anchor
- The Reserve Bank of India was established on 1 April 1935 under the RBI Act, 1934; it was nationalised in 1949.
- Commercial banks are regulated under the Banking Regulation Act, 1949. Scheduled banks are those included in the Second Schedule of the RBI Act, 1934.
- Monetary policy is decided by the Monetary Policy Committee; the repo rate is the rate at which RBI lends to banks against government securities, and CRR/SLR are reserve requirements.
- SEBI regulates securities markets, IRDAI insurance, PFRDA pensions and NPCI retail payment systems such as UPI and IMPS.
J&K facts to anchor
Jammu & Kashmir Bank was established on 1 October 1938 by Maharaja Hari Singh and is headquartered in Srinagar. It is a scheduled commercial bank in the private sector, with the Government of Jammu and Kashmir as its largest shareholder. The Union Territory of Jammu and Kashmir was formed on 31 October 2019 under the Jammu and Kashmir Reorganisation Act, 2019, with Srinagar as summer capital and Jammu as winter capital.
Worked example
Question: Which regulator's permission is primarily needed for a bank to open a new branch in India? Reason: branch licensing for banks is a banking-regulation function, so the answer is the RBI, not SEBI (markets) or IRDAI (insurance). For a J&K Bank question, if the option set includes "State Bank of India", "RBI" and "NITI Aayog", the licensing power clearly belongs to RBI under the Banking Regulation Act, 1949.
Traps
- Confusing the RBI Act, 1934 with the Banking Regulation Act, 1949.
- Mixing J&K's summer and winter capitals.
- Assuming J&K Bank is a public-sector bank; it is a private-sector bank with government shareholding.