State Exams GK Questions 2026

Its coast runs for about 1,600 km, longer than that of any other state, because the Saurashtra peninsula and the Kachchh region give it two deep gulfs, the Gulf of Kachchh in the north west and the Gulf of Khambhat in the south east.

It is a planned city laid out in numbered sectors on the bank of the Sabarmati and named after Mahatma Gandhi, and it took over as capital after the state was formed.

On that day the bilingual State of Bombay was divided under the Bombay Reorganisation Act, 1960 into a Gujarati speaking Gujarat and a Marathi speaking Maharashtra, so both states share their formation day.

NACH is the bulk payment system for many credits or debits at once, such as salary, pension, dividend, subsidy and direct benefit transfer on the credit side and loan instalments, insurance premiums and utility bills on the debit side, and it took over the work of the older ECS with…

A FASTag is an RFID sticker on the windscreen which a reader at the toll plaza identifies from a distance, so the toll is debited from the linked account or wallet without the vehicle stopping; the programme is run by NPCI as National Electronic Toll Collection.

Under this Act no person may commence or operate a payment system in India without authorisation from the Reserve Bank, and it created the Board for Regulation and Supervision of Payment and Settlement Systems within the RBI.

BHIM stands for Bharat Interface for Money, and the acronym was chosen in honour of Dr Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar, the chairman of the drafting committee of the Constitution and a trained economist.

RuPay was launched by NPCI in 2012 so that debit and credit card transactions between Indian cardholders and Indian merchants are authorised and settled within the country instead of being switched abroad, and its name joins Rupee with Payment.

A virtual payment address takes the form of a name followed by a bank handle and acts as a pointer to the underlying account, so a payment can be made or collected without revealing the account number or the branch code.

The Immediate Payment Service, launched in 2010, already moved money between banks instantly at every hour, and UPI uses that rail while adding the virtual payment address, interoperable applications and single click authentication.

UPI was launched by NPCI in 2016, and the BHIM application followed in December of the same year, which is why 2016 is the single most asked year in this topic.

NPCI was set up on the initiative of the Reserve Bank of India together with the Indian Banks Association, and ten core promoter banks held its first shareholding, which is why it is owned by the banking industry rather than by the government.

NPCI was incorporated in 2008 as a not for profit company under Section 25 of the Companies Act, 1956 to act as the umbrella organisation for all retail payment systems in India, and it began by taking over the National Financial Switch the following year.

Under the Act of 1999 a registered geographical indication, and the entry of an authorised user, is valid for ten years and may be renewed for further periods of ten years without limit, so a GI can last for ever if renewal is applied for in time.

Muga is reared on som and soalu trees in the Brahmaputra valley, and its thread has a natural golden sheen that grows brighter with washing; it is used for the mekhela chador and holds a GI in the name of Assam.

Madhubani, also called Mithila painting, comes from the Mithila region of northern Bihar, where women painted the walls and floors of the marriage chamber with natural colours, gods, fish, bamboo and the sun and moon, filling every gap with pattern.

Channapatna, a town between Bengaluru and Mysuru, is called the toy town of India; its artisans turn soft ivory wood on a lathe and finish it with lac and vegetable colours, and the toys carry a GI.

Masulipatnam, the port town of coastal Andhra Pradesh, was the great centre of the painted and block printed cotton that European traders bought as chintz, and the same town is still one of the two homes of kalamkari.

In Patola weaving the yarn of both the warp and the weft is tied and dyed before weaving, so the motif is built up from the threads themselves and looks the same from either side; Patan in north Gujarat is its historic centre and the craft carries a GI.

Bidriware takes its name from Bidar, a town in northern Karnataka, where craftspersons cast an alloy of zinc and copper, engrave it, inlay pure silver wire and then rub the surface with a special soil that turns the alloy deep black while the silver stays bright.