CDS GK Questions 2026

Gir in the Saurashtra region of Gujarat falls in the Gujarat-Rajwara province of the Semi-Arid zone, a belt of thorn and dry deciduous forest between the desert and the Deccan, which also holds Ranthambore, Sariska and the blackbuck grasslands of Velavadar.

The Islands zone, made up of the Andaman and Nicobar group and Lakshadweep, accounts for only about 0.03 per cent of the area of India, the smallest share of any zone, yet it holds coral reefs and species found nowhere else, such as the Narcondam hornbill and the Nicobar megapode…

The Indian Desert zone has two parts, the sandy Thar of Rajasthan and the salt wastes of Kachchh in Gujarat, and the Indian wild ass or khur survives only in the Little Rann of Kachchh, protected in the Wild Ass Sanctuary.

Dachigam National Park near Srinagar, in the Himalaya biogeographic zone, is the last stronghold of the hangul, the Kashmir stag, which is the only surviving race of the red deer group in the Indian subcontinent and the state animal of Jammu and Kashmir.

The Western Ghats zone includes the hill chain and the Malabar coastal plain, and its wet evergreen forests and high shola grassland mosaic hold a very high share of endemic species, among them the lion-tailed macaque of the rainforest canopy and the Nilgiri tahr of the Eravikulam grasslands.

The sundari is a mangrove tree of the tidal deltaic forests of the Coasts biogeographic zone, and the Sundarbans of the Ganga-Brahmaputra delta take their name from it; its wood is hard and durable, and like other mangroves it has salt tolerant roots and breathing roots in the waterlogged mud.

The Trans-Himalaya is the belt lying beyond the Great Himalaya in Ladakh, Lahaul-Spiti and northern Sikkim; it is a cold desert because it stands in the rain shadow of the high ranges, and it is the one Indian zone whose fauna, such as the kiang, wild yak and black-necked crane…

Nokrek lies in the Garo Hills of Meghalaya and represents the North-East India biogeographic zone in the network of biosphere reserves; it is known for the wild citrus relative called the Indian wild orange and for the hoolock gibbon.

The Deccan Peninsula zone covers about forty-two per cent of the country, roughly two-fifths, stretching over the central highlands, Chota Nagpur, the eastern highlands and the Deccan plateau, and it carries most of India sal and teak forests and tiger reserves.

W. A. Rodgers and H. S. Panwar of the Wildlife Institute of India proposed the ten-zone biogeographic classification in 1988 while planning a representative wildlife protected area network for the country, and the ten zones with their biotic provinces are still the official framework.

The Nizam of Hyderabad refused to join either dominion, and after the breakdown of talks and the activity of the Razakar militia the Government of India launched a police action codenamed Operation Polo in September 1948, after which the state joined the Indian Union.

On the night of 4 December 1971 Indian missile boats struck ships and fuel installations at Karachi harbour in an operation named Trident, and a follow-up raid on 8 December was named Operation Python.

On that date in 1999 the Army announced the successful conclusion of Operation Vijay, by which the intruders were cleared from the heights of the Kargil sector, supported by Operation Safed Sagar of the Air Force and Operation Talwar of the Navy.

He commanded a company of 13 Kumaon at Rezang La in Ladakh in November 1962 and his men held the post against a far larger Chinese force; he was awarded the Param Vir Chakra posthumously.

On 13 April 1984 Indian troops were airlifted on to the heights of the Karakoram to forestall a Pakistani move, and the glacier has since been held as the highest battlefield in the world.

As the commander of the Eastern Command he accepted the surrender of the Pakistani forces at the Ramna Race Course in Dhaka on 16 December 1971, the day observed every year as Vijay Diwas.

In December 1961 the Army, Navy and Air Force together ended four and a half centuries of Portuguese rule in these territories in a short operation given the code name Vijay.

The declaration was signed on 10 January 1966 at Tashkent by Prime Minister Lal Bahadur Shastri and President Ayub Khan of Pakistan, with the Soviet Union acting as mediator, and Shastri died there the next day.

The country came into being in December 1971 at the end of the liberation war, in which the Indian armed forces entered the conflict after Pakistani air strikes codenamed Operation Chengiz Khan on 3 December and accepted the surrender at Dhaka on 16 December.

The territory was the eastern wing of Pakistan from 1947, and it became the independent country of Bangladesh after the war of 1971, which ended when Lieutenant General A. A. K. Niazi signed the Instrument of Surrender at Dhaka on 16 December 1971 before Lieutenant General Jagjit Singh Aurora.