State Exams GK Questions 2026

Prachand is the Light Combat Helicopter developed and built by Hindustan Aeronautics Limited, designed to operate from high-altitude bases, which makes it suited to the Siachen and Ladakh sectors where few attack helicopters can carry a useful load.

Rafale is a twin-engine multirole fighter made by Dassault Aviation, the same French company that made the Mirage 2000 flown by India since the 1980s, and the first Indian Rafale squadron was raised at Ambala.

INS Arihant was built under the Advanced Technology Vessel programme and commissioned in 2016; because it carries ballistic missiles, the K-15 Sagarika among them, it completed India's nuclear triad, that is the ability to launch a nuclear weapon from land, from the air and from the sea.

The Kalvari class are conventional diesel-electric attack submarines built at Mazagon Dock Shipbuilders in Mumbai to the Scorpene design under a transfer of technology, and the class includes INS Kalvari, Khanderi, Karanj, Vela, Vagir and Vagsheer.

Tejas is a single-engine multirole fighter designed by the Aeronautical Development Agency and manufactured by Hindustan Aeronautics Limited, the public sector company that also builds the Dhruv helicopter, the Prachand light combat helicopter and the Su-30MKI under licence at Nashik.

The indigenous aircraft carrier, commissioned in September 2022 as INS Vikrant, was designed by the Navy's own design organisation and built at Cochin Shipyard in Kerala, which made India one of the few countries able to build a carrier.

Article 18 abolishes titles and forbids the State from conferring any title except a military or academic distinction; it also bars citizens from accepting a title from a foreign state.

The Pampa Award was instituted by the Government of Karnataka in 1987 as the highest literary honour of the state and is named after Pampa, the tenth-century poet regarded as the father of Kannada literature and the author of the Vikramarjuna Vijaya.

The Yash Bharti Samman was instituted by the Government of Uttar Pradesh in 1994 and is given for distinguished work in art, literature, music, sport, journalism and social service by people connected with the state.

The Tansen Samman is given by the Government of Madhya Pradesh for Hindustani classical music and is announced in connection with the Tansen Samaroh, the music festival held every year at Behat near Gwalior, the birthplace of Tansen, the great singer of Akbar's court and one of the nine jewels…

The Kalidas Samman was instituted by the Government of Madhya Pradesh in 1980 and is given by rotation in four fields of the classical arts: classical music, classical dance, theatre and the plastic arts.

The Government of West Bengal instituted Banga Bibhushan and Banga Bhushan in 2011 to honour people from the state in fields such as literature, music, cinema, sport, science and social service, with Banga Bibhushan ranked above Banga Bhushan.

Kerala instituted three civilian honours in 2021, modelled on the idea of a graded set: Kerala Jyothi at the top, Kerala Prabha next and Kerala Sree third.

The Government of Assam created a three-step set of state honours in 2021: Assam Baibhav at the top for exceptional service to the state, Assam Saurav next, and Assam Gaurav for distinguished work in specific fields.

The Government of Maharashtra instituted the Maharashtra Bhushan in 1996 as the highest civilian award of the state, open to work in literature, art, sport, science, social service, medicine and public administration, and the first award went to the Marathi writer and humorist Purushottam Laxman Deshpande, remembered as Pu La…

The Karnataka Ratna was instituted by the Government of Karnataka in 1992 as the highest civilian honour of the state, and the first person to receive it was Kuppali Venkatappa Puttappa, the Kannada poet known by his pen name Kuvempu, who had also written the state song of Karnataka.

The anda, meaning the egg, is the solid hemispherical dome of a stupa, raised over the relic chamber, and it is the part that gives the stupa its shape.

Sammed Shikharji stands on Parasnath hill in the Giridih district of Jharkhand, the highest hill in the state, and is held to be the place where twenty of the twenty-four tirthankaras attained liberation, which makes it the holiest of all Jain tirthas.

The thirty-four caves at Ellora in Maharashtra are grouped by faith: caves 1 to 12 are Buddhist, caves 13 to 29 are Hindu, and caves 30 to 34 are Jain, the finest of the Jain group being Cave 32, the Indra Sabha, with its carved mandapa and the image of…

The Hathigumpha or elephant cave at Udayagiri near Bhubaneswar carries the long Prakrit inscription of Kharavela, the Chedi or Mahameghavahana king of Kalinga, which records his campaigns and his patronage of Jainism; Udayagiri and the neighbouring Khandagiri form a Jain cave group.