SSC CHSL GK Questions 2026

Bundi, in the Hadoti region, has dozens of baoris and is therefore called the city of stepwells; the grandest is Rani ji ki Baori, built in 1699 by Rani Nathavati, with a high arched gate and carved elephant brackets.

In south Bihar the pyne is a diversion channel that takes flood water from a river, and the ahar is a catchment basin with embankments on three sides in which that water is stored for the rice crop, a system suited to the region hard soil and uneven rainfall.

A tanka is a covered underground cistern, usually circular, dug in the courtyard of a house or in a public square in western Rajasthan, into which rain from the roof or a paved catchment is led and stored for drinking through the dry months.

Both lie in the Mehrauli area of Delhi; Gandhak ki Baoli, from the time of Iltutmish, takes its name from the sulphurous smell of its water, and Rajon ki Baoli belongs to the Lodi period and is named after the masons who once used it.

Adalaj ni Vav stands at Adalaj in Gandhinagar district and was completed in 1499 during the reign of Mahmud Begada; its carving mixes Hindu motifs with Islamic geometric and floral work, and the queen Rudabai is remembered in its story.

The Kallanai, known in English as the Grand Anicut, is a dam of unhewn stone laid across the Kaveri in the Thanjavur region and is credited to the early Chola king Karikala; it still spreads the river water over the delta.

Dholavira, on Khadir island in the Rann of Kutch, had no perennial river, so its builders dammed the Manhar and Mansar streams and cut a series of large reservoirs inside the walled town, the most advanced water engineering known from the Harappan civilisation.

In Karnataka and the Deccan the stepped tank built beside a temple for ritual bathing is called a kalyani or a pushkarni, and the stepped tank at Hampi, built of fitted stone blocks, is the best known example.

Chand Baori is at Abhaneri in Dausa district of Rajasthan, opposite the Harshat Mata temple, and is attributed to King Chanda of the Nikumbha house in about the ninth century; its criss-cross flights descending thirteen storeys make it one of the deepest stepwells in India.

The reverse of the one hundred rupee note of the Mahatma Gandhi new series carries the motif of Rani ki Vav at Patan, chosen because it is a World Heritage Site that stands for Indian water architecture.

Queen Udayamati had the stepwell built in the eleventh century in memory of her husband Bhimdev I of the Solanki or Chaulukya dynasty of Gujarat, which is why it is described as a memorial in the form of an inverted temple.

Rani ki Vav stands on the bank of the Saraswati at Patan, the old Solanki capital called Anhilwad Patan, and was inscribed as a World Heritage Site in 2014 for its seven storeys of sculpture in the Maru-Gurjara style.

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.