GATE GE Previous Year Papers 2022–2026: Topic Counts for Part A, B1, B2

The GATE Geomatics booklet prints 84 questions and you answer 65: General Aptitude, Part A, and one of Part B1 or B2. That makes the usual “chapter-wise weightage” tables misleading, because a B2 question is worth nothing to a candidate who chose B1. We sorted every question of the 2023, 2024, 2025 and 2026 booklets, 336 in all, onto the 2027 syllabus headings and counted each part separately. Three findings stand out. Remote sensing is the single biggest block, about 17 of Part A’s 55 marks. B1 is steady year to year, while B2 swings. And Part A has turned from MSQ-heavy to MCQ-heavy, which puts more of it under negative marking.

Our classification of the official GE papers and final keys.

Part A is remarkably stable. GNSS has had exactly 7 questions every year. Engineering Mathematics (errors, most probable values, least squares and the χ² test) has had 9 or 10. Remote sensing and GIS move by two questions at most. If you are short of time, Part A is where preparation pays most reliably: it is compulsory, it is 55 of your 85 subject marks, and its topics barely move.

B1 has three topics, and none of them moved by more than two questions between years. Land surveying leads with about 12 marks, then maps and photogrammetry. B2 has six topics that swing: enhancement went from 2 questions in 2025 to 5 in 2026, and classification from 4 to 1. Our comparison guide on choosing B1 or B2 works through what that means.

Three readings (ours). Part A swung from MSQ to MCQ: 24 MSQ marks in 2024, 6 and 10 in 2025 and 2026. MCQs carry −1/3 or −2/3 for a wrong answer, so guessing costs more now than it did. B2 was the MSQ part in 2026 (16 of 30), while B1 stays MCQ- and NAT-led. And single-key MSQs recur every year: a “select all that apply” question with exactly one correct option (2023 Q52; 2024 Q39, Q40, Q42, Q44 and Q80; 2025 Q59; 2026 Q21, Q78 and Q81). Do not assume an MSQ must have two answers.

Use this list as a revision checklist. The pattern is clear: GE setters return to a set of standard computations. In Part A these are standard error, least squares, DOP, buffers and blackbody radiation. In B1 they are relief displacement, parallax, UTM zones and sheet numbers. In B2 they are convolution, contrast stretching, resampling, image storage in bits and bytes, PCA and indices. Every one of them is a numerical you can drill.

Write 2025 and 2026 last. They are the closest to the current setters and are on the lowest-scoring fields, so they are the best check of whether your marks are competitive. When you mark a paper, strike out the Fourier questions (2024 Q73, 2025 Q76, 2026 Q70 and Q77), which are now out of the syllabus. Write both B parts once, even if you have chosen one, so that the choice in the exam hall is an informed one.