CDS GK Questions 2026

MAHASAGAR is the name given to India's maritime vision, and the QUAD-at-Sea Ship Observer Mission is described as an expression of it, alongside the Indian Coast Guard's own commitment to collective engagement and a secure maritime environment in the Indo-Pacific.

The officers who boarded the ship for the passage are called Sea Riders, and the split is worth memorising because a paper setter can ask about it directly: India and Japan contributed two officers each, while Australia and the United States contributed one officer each, which adds up to six…

Shaunak is the Indian Coast Guard ship that left Chennai on 25 September 2026 for Perth in Australia as India's contribution to the QUAD-at-Sea Ship Observer Mission, carrying six Sea Riders drawn from the four QUAD countries.

The Vice-President offered these three ideas as the philosophy behind the programme while urging countries of the Global South to respond together to challenges that cut across technology, cyberspace, artificial intelligence, energy and maritime security, climate change and supply chains.

The programme is put together by the two ministries along with that secretariat, and it is conducted in association with the National Defence College, which is where such strategic courses are run.

The fourth edition of the International Strategic Engagement Programme has 38 delegates in all, and of these 25 are international delegates who have come from 22 countries, among them Sri Lanka, Seychelles, Mongolia, Nepal, Mauritius, Maldives, Oman, Guyana, Chile, Argentina, the Philippines, Thailand, Armenia, Kyrgyzstan, Qatar, Myanmar, Uzbekistan and Brazil.

Savitri Khanolkar chose the motif from the old story in which the sage Dadhichi gave up his body so that his bones could be made into the weapon with which Indra defeated his enemy, a symbol of sacrifice that suits the highest award for valour.

Captain Vikram Batra of the 13 Jammu and Kashmir Rifles received it posthumously for the recapture of heights during the Kargil conflict of 1999.

It is a peacetime gallantry award, given for conspicuous gallantry away from the field of battle, and it may be conferred on civilians as well as on members of the armed forces.

She was the flight purser on a hijacked aircraft at Karachi in 1986 and was killed while shielding passengers as she helped them escape.

The three peacetime gallantry awards were instituted in 1952 as the Ashoka Chakra of the first, second and third class, and in January 1967 the second and third were renamed the Kirti Chakra and the Shaurya Chakra, while the first kept the name Ashoka Chakra.

The Shaurya Chakra is the third of the peacetime gallantry awards and therefore corresponds to the third of the wartime awards, the Vir Chakra, both being given for acts of gallantry that rank below the first two grades.

The three wartime awards have three peacetime counterparts in the same order: Param Vir Chakra with Ashoka Chakra, Maha Vir Chakra with Kirti Chakra and Vir Chakra with Shaurya Chakra.

The three wartime awards were instituted on that date but were given effect from 15 August 1947, so that acts of bravery in the fighting in Kashmir could be recognised.

Born in Switzerland to a Swiss father and a Hungarian mother, she married an officer of the Indian Army, took Indian citizenship and made a deep study of Indian languages and tradition, which she drew on for the design of the medal and its vajra motif.

His company held off a much larger body of raiders and kept them from reaching the airfield, which allowed reinforcements to continue arriving in Kashmir.

It is awarded for the most conspicuous bravery or an act of daring or self-sacrifice of the highest order away from the field of battle, and it may be given to civilians as well as to members of the armed forces.

It is given for the most conspicuous act of bravery or self-sacrifice in the presence of the enemy, on land, at sea or in the air, and its name means the wheel of the ultimate brave.

What it does list are professional engagements in harbour and at sea of three kinds: cross-deck visits, in which sailors of one navy go aboard the other's ship; operational interactions, in which the two crews compare their drills and procedures; and sporting engagements between the ships' companies.

VARUNA is the naval exercise that India holds with the French Navy, and the supporting detail in this announcement points the same way, since the Indian ship has berthed at Toulon, a French port on the Mediterranean, for the harbour and sea phases of the exercise.