IBPS Clerk Books 2026: Important Books for Prelims, Mains

The English Language section of IBPS Clerk carries questions of high school. Candidates should read newspapers and books. Candidates should read the editorial section of the newspapers to improve their vocabulary.

IBPS Clerk Reasoning Ability section assess a candidate's logical aptitude. Questions in this section are asked from Puzzle and Arrangements, Inequality, Syllogism, Coding-Decoding, Blood Relations, Direction sense and Order and Ranking, etc. For the Reasoning Ability section, candidates can refer to Modern Approach to Verbal and Non-Verbal Reasoning by RS Agarwal, Analytical Reasoning by MK Pandey and A New Approach to Reasoning: Verbal and Non-Verbal by BS Sijwali and Indus Sijwali. To ace the Reasoning section, candidates must practice mock tests to improve their speed and accuracy of solving questions. Candidates must learn the shortcut tricks of solving questions. Candidates must practice previous year question papers to know the type of questions asked in the exam.

There are negative marking in IBPS Clerk exam. 0.25 marks are deducted as penalty for wrong answers. For correct answers, candidates score one mark. Candidates are advised to mark their answers carefully as there are negative markings. For wrong answers marked in the exam, the marks of candidates will be deducted. Candidates are required to secure both overall and sectional cut off marks.

Yes, there are sectional timings in IBPS Clerk exam. In prelims exam, candidates will get 20 minutes to answer each section. In the Mains exam, 35 minutes each will be given to answer questions from General/Financial Awareness, General English and 45 minutes each will be given to attempt Reasoning Ability & Computer Aptitude and Quantitative Aptitude questions. The section-wise exam timings for prelims and mains exam are given below.

Prelims Exam

Sections	IBPS Clerk Prelims Exam Time Duration (In Minutes)
English Language	20
Numerical Ability	20
Reasoning Ability	20
Total	60 Minutes

Mains Exam

Sections	IBPS clerk mains sectional timing
General/Financial Awareness	35 minutes
General English	35 minutes
Reasoning Ability & Computer Aptitude	45 minutes
Quantitative Aptitude	45 minutes
Total	160 minutes

For General and Financial Awareness section, candidates can refer to India Year Book, Manorama Yearbook, Banking Awareness by Arihant Publications and Lucent's GK book. The best books for IBPS Clerk Computer Knowledge are Objective Computer Awareness by R Pillai, Computer Knowledge for SBI/ IBPS Clerk/ PO/ RRB/ RBI/ SSC/ Insurance Exams by Shikha Agarwal, Objective Question Bank of Computer Awareness for General Competitions by Arihant Experts, Computer by Rani Ahilya and Objective Computer Awareness by Somya Ranjan Behera.

Candidates must choose the IBPS Clerk books that have covered the syllabus for English. The books should be simple and easy to understand. The English Language section appears both in prelims and mains exams.

The Quantitative Aptitude section tests a candidate's calculative ability. Questions are asked from the topics such as Number Series, Simplification/ Approximation, Quadratic Equations, Data Interpretation, Data Sufficiency, etc. Candidates for the Quantitative Aptitude section can refer to Quantitative Aptitude by R S Agarwal, Data Interpretation by Arun Sharma, Objective Mathematics for Competitive Exams by Tarun Goal and Fast Track Arithmetic by Rajesh Verma. The tips and tricks to improve IBPS Clerk Quant section are given below:

• Candidates should practice variety of questions on different topics
• Candidates must attempt mock tests and analyse their strengths and weaknesses
• Go through the previous years' question papers to understand and analyse the weightage of each subject
• Candidates must improve their speed and accuracy of solving questions