State Exams GK Questions 2026

Borneo, the third largest island in the world, is divided between the Indonesian provinces of Kalimantan in the south, the Malaysian states of Sabah and Sarawak in the north, and the small sultanate of Brunei on the northern coast, and it is the only large island shared by three countries.

The Mozambique Channel is the arm of the Indian Ocean that lies between Madagascar and the coast of Mozambique on the African mainland, and Madagascar itself is a continental island that broke away from Africa and later from India, which is why its wildlife is so distinctive.

The Ten Degree Channel runs along the tenth parallel of north latitude across the Bay of Bengal and separates the Andaman group in the north from the Nicobar group in the south, which is why the Union Territory is named for both groups.

Barren Island in the Andaman group of the Bay of Bengal carries the only active volcano in India and indeed in South Asia, part of the volcanic arc produced where the Indian plate dips beneath the Burma plate, and it has erupted several times in recent decades.

Majuli lies in the Brahmaputra in Assam, formed by silt deposited by the river and its tributaries, is a seat of the Vaishnava satras founded in the tradition of Srimanta Sankardeva, and has been constituted a district of Assam, the first river island district in the country.

Indonesia is a chain of more than seventeen thousand islands stretching along the equator between the Indian and Pacific Oceans, with Java, Sumatra, Sulawesi and the Indonesian halves of Borneo and New Guinea as its principal members, and it is the largest archipelago in the world.

Greenland, an autonomous territory of Denmark lying between the North Atlantic and the Arctic Ocean, is the largest island on earth, most of it covered by an ice sheet, and it is a continental island separated from the North American landmass.

The potato is Solanum tuberosum, and the epithet tuberosum points to the tuber, a swollen underground stem rather than a root, which is the part eaten; the plant belongs to the nightshade family and reached India through the Portuguese.

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.