CDS GK Questions 2026

The correct answer is C, about minus 196 degrees Celsius, the boiling point of liquid nitrogen, at which all metabolic activity in the stored material stops and the germplasm can be kept for very long periods without change.

These seeds lose their viability when their moisture content is reduced, so they cannot be kept in the cold rooms of a seed bank; mango, jackfruit, coconut, cocoa and most tropical fruit trees are examples, and they are conserved instead in field gene banks, as tissue cultures or in cryobanks.

The Botanical Survey of India was founded in 1890 with its headquarters in Kolkata, close to the Indian Botanic Garden at Howrah, and it surveys the plant resources of the country, publishes floras and maintains herbaria and botanical gardens through its regional circles.

The correct answer is A, the National Bureau of Plant Genetic Resources at New Delhi, an institute of the Indian Council of Agricultural Research, which holds the National Gene Bank where seeds of crop plants and their wild relatives are stored at low temperature for long-term conservation.

The correct answer is B, Robert Kyd, an officer of the East India Company who proposed and founded the garden at Shibpur in Howrah in 1787, first for growing plants of economic value such as teak and spices.

The correct answer is B, the Alipore Zoological Garden in Kolkata, opened to the public in 1876 and therefore the oldest formally established zoo in the country.

The amendment of 1991 inserted the provisions on zoos into that Act, and the Central Zoo Authority was constituted in 1992 to recognise zoos, prescribe standards for animal housing, upkeep and veterinary care and coordinate conservation breeding; a zoo without its recognition cannot operate.

Ex-situ conservation means keeping a species, or only its germplasm, outside its natural habitat, which is what a botanical garden, a zoo, an aquarium, a seed bank, a gene bank or a conservation breeding centre does.

Statement 1 is wrong: the Constitution nowhere says that the senior-most judge must become Chief Justice of India; seniority is a convention and the Memorandum of Procedure records it, not Article 124.

The correct answer is C, Article 222, which empowers the President to transfer a judge from one High Court to any other High Court after consultation with the Chief Justice of India; by the collegium practice laid down in the Third Judges Case, the Chief Justice forms that opinion with…

Article 124(3) requires a citizen of India who either has been a judge of a High Court for at least five years, or has been an advocate of a High Court for at least ten years, or is in the opinion of the President a distinguished jurist.

Article 217(1) originally fixed the retirement age of a High Court judge at 60 years, and the Fifteenth Constitutional Amendment Act of 1963 raised it to 62.

A five-judge Constitution Bench held that the Ninety-ninth Amendment and the NJAC Act violated the independence of the judiciary, which is part of the basic structure, mainly because the Union Law Minister and two eminent persons would sit on a body selecting judges.

Article 124A gave the National Judicial Appointments Commission six members: the Chief Justice of India as ex officio chairperson, the two next senior-most judges of the Supreme Court, the Union Minister of Law and Justice, and two eminent persons nominated by a committee consisting of the Prime Minister, the Chief…

It was brought into force in April 2015 along with the NJAC Act, 2014, and struck down by a Constitution Bench the same year.

The Second Judges Case of 1993 required the Chief Justice of India to form his opinion in consultation with his two senior-most colleagues, so the first collegium had three members.

The Court there read "consultation" literally, holding that the Chief Justice of India's opinion was not binding on the government, which therefore kept the final say in appointments.

Article 124(1) establishes the Supreme Court, and Article 124(2) provides that every judge of the Supreme Court shall be appointed by the President by warrant under his hand and seal after consultation with such judges of the Supreme Court and the High Courts as the President may deem necessary; its…

The board meeting is convened by the Indian Coast Guard under the chairmanship of its Director General, Paramesh Sivamani, and takes up national preparedness for rescue at sea, the management of distress alerts and faster movement of rescue assets through technology and coordination between agencies.

The number of observers is slightly larger than the number of countries because some nations have sent more than one representative, and the Ministry of Defence treats this international presence as a highlight of the drill, since it points to shared rescue protocols and the ability of different navies and…