SSC MTS GK Questions 2026

The lotus, declared the national flower of India, is Nelumbo nucifera, an aquatic plant rooted in the mud of ponds and tanks with leaves and flowers held above the water, and it carries a long place in Indian art and religion.

Turmeric is Curcuma longa, a rhizome of the ginger family whose yellow colour comes from curcumin, and it is well known in the intellectual property story in which a United States patent on the use of turmeric for wound healing was revoked after India produced evidence of traditional knowledge.

Bombyx mori is the mulberry silkworm, the insect reared in sericulture, whose larva spins the cocoon from which mulberry silk is reeled, and the word mori refers to the mulberry on whose leaves it feeds.

Neem is Azadirachta indica, a tree valued in Indian medicine for its leaves, bark and oil, and it is remembered in current affairs as well because a European patent on a neem based fungicide was revoked after India challenged it.

In a binomial name the first word is the genus and is written with a capital initial letter, while the second word is the species epithet and is written entirely in small letters; both are italicised in print and underlined separately in handwriting.

The Indian peafowl, declared the national bird of India, is Pavo cristatus, the epithet cristatus referring to the crest on its head, and it is protected under the Wild Life Protection Act of 1972.

Rice is Oryza sativa, a member of the grass family, and the epithet sativa, meaning cultivated or sown, marks it as a crop raised by farmers rather than a wild species.

Panthera tigris is the tiger, the national animal of India, and the Bengal tiger found in the country is its subspecies Panthera tigris tigris, a three part name that illustrates trinomial nomenclature.

The mango belongs to the genus Mangifera and the species epithet indica marks its Indian origin; it is also the national fruit of India, which is why this name appears in both science and static general knowledge papers.

The Swedish naturalist Carolus Linnaeus introduced the two part naming of organisms in Systema Naturae and applied it to the plant kingdom in Species Plantarum, and because he also built the ranked system of classification he is called the father of taxonomy.

Article 54 confines the electoral college to elected members, so the twelve members nominated to the Rajya Sabha and any nominated members of an Assembly take no part in the presidential election; they do, however, vote in the election of the Vice-President under Article 66, which is the point the…

He was Vice-President from 11 August 2007 to 10 August 2017, two consecutive full terms, and is the only person after Dr. S. Radhakrishnan to achieve that.

He became Vice-President on 21 August 1997 and died on 27 July 2002, a few days before his term was to end, the only holder of the office to die in harness.

Article 64 provides that the Vice-President shall be ex-officio Chairman of the Council of States, that is the Rajya Sabha, and shall hold no other office of profit; when he acts as President he does not perform the duties of Chairman and draws no salary as Chairman.

She was the twelfth President of India and held office from 2007 to 2012, the first woman to do so, having earlier served as Governor of Rajasthan.

In 1977 every other nomination was rejected and he was declared elected unopposed, the only President of India chosen in that manner.

Article 60 provides that the President shall, before entering upon his office, make and subscribe an oath or affirmation in the presence of the Chief Justice of India, or in his absence the senior-most Judge of the Supreme Court available.

Article 54 says the President shall be elected by an electoral college consisting of the elected members of both Houses of Parliament and the elected members of the Legislative Assemblies of the States, the Assemblies of Delhi and Puducherry having been added by the Seventieth Amendment.

When Dr. Zakir Husain died on 3 May 1969, Shri V. V. Giri was the Vice-President, and under Article 65 the Vice-President discharges the functions of the President during such a vacancy.

He took office in May 1967 and died on 3 May 1969, which gave him the shortest tenure of any President of India and made him the first to die in office.