GATE EC Previous Year Papers 2024–2026: Subject-wise Count, MSQ and NAT

Weightage tables for GATE EC are everywhere, and almost none of them say where their numbers come from. This one is counted from the official papers: every one of the 55 subject questions in the 2024, 2025 and 2026 EC papers was read and assigned to a subject, with its type and marks taken from the official final answer key. The result is a flatter paper than most tables suggest — no single subject averaged more than about 12 marks — and a steady share of multiple-select questions that EC, unlike some papers, has kept.

Official GATE EC papers and final keys 2023–2026; our counts.

How we counted: each subject question was read in the official paper and assigned to the one syllabus section it mainly tests, with Networks and Signals & Systems split out of their shared section; type and marks come from the official final key, and questions awarded “marks to all” are counted in their subject. Eighteen questions across the three years could reasonably sit in two subjects — a signal-energy question that is also mathematics, a curl test that is also electromagnetics — and we note the alternative in our working file. Shifting those would move a subject by two or three marks, not change the picture.

Three readings. First, no subject is safe to skip: every core subject carried between 6 and 13 marks, and single subjects swung by five or six marks between years (Signals 7 → 13, Devices 12 → 7). Second, the syllabus section “Networks, Signals and Systems” is the heaviest block at 13–20 marks — but Networks on its own is the lightest subject. Third, Engineering Mathematics is fixed at 13 marks by rule; by our reading only 9 marks of 2026 questions were pure mathematics, with maths-flavoured items (a Laplace transform of a convolution, orthogonality of sinusoids, signal energy) classed under subjects. Counted the other way, it reaches 13–14.

MSQs matter in EC: 13 to 21 marks since 2024, where the Mechanical paper had dropped to none by 2026. They carry no negative marks — but also no partial marks, so one wrong tick or one missed option scores zero. NAT marks fell from 27 to 20 over the period. And the negatively marked MCQs still carry about half the subject marks, which is where penalties bite: in 2026, 3,776 appeared candidates (3.9%) finished with a negative total.

A repeated topic is not a repeated question — the numbers and the twist change every year — but the list is a fair guide to what the setters treat as core. Control-system representations, digital-communication detection and information theory appear every year; so do two-port networks, transmission lines and sampling. Work the three official papers in full under a three-hour timer before using any other question bank.