State Exams GK Questions 2026

The Montreux Record lists Ramsar sites where the ecological character has changed, is changing or is likely to change because of pollution, encroachment, siltation or other interference, so that the parties can direct attention and assistance there.

Charles Darwin explained its formation: a fringing reef grows around a volcanic island, the island slowly subsides, the reef keeps growing upward towards the light, and in the end only a ring of reef and a lagoon are left where the island stood.

Its water is muddy, its tidal range is among the highest in the country and several rivers empty into it, so the clear, silt-free conditions that corals need are absent; it is known instead for tidal energy potential.

These single-celled algae live within the tissue of the coral polyp, photosynthesise, hand most of the food they make to the polyp and give the reef its colour; the polyp in return offers shelter and nutrients, a textbook case of symbiosis.

Mangrove mud is waterlogged and short of oxygen, so these roots grow vertically out of the soil and take in air through small pores called lenticels; they are the classic adaptation asked about in examinations, along with stilt roots and vivipary.

It is named after the sundari tree, holds the only mangrove population of the Royal Bengal tiger, and the Indian portion is a national park, a biosphere reserve and a World Heritage Site.

Keibul Lamjao National Park rests on these mats and is the last natural home of the sangai, the brow-antlered deer of Manipur.

The correct answer is B, 2 February, the anniversary of the signing of the Ramsar Convention in 1971, which is why the day carries that date.

The convention takes its name from Ramsar, a town on the Caspian coast of Iran, where it was signed on 2 February 1971; it came into force in 1975 and is the oldest of the modern global environmental treaties.

The Harike Wetland in Punjab was created by building a barrage just below the point where the Beas joins the Sutlej, so the first pair is correct and it is the only one.

These twin lakes lie near Jammu in the Jammu and Kashmir region, not in Uttar Pradesh, so they are the odd one out in this list.

The World Health Organization keeps the last week of April for this campaign, which presses the case for vaccination at every age and reminds governments of the children still missed by routine immunisation.

On that day in 1949 the Constituent Assembly adopted Hindi in the Devanagari script as the official language of the union, and the anniversary is kept as Hindi Diwas, after which offices run a fortnight of competitions and reviews of official language work.

A pakhwada is a fortnight, half of a lunar month, and government departments use it when a theme needs actual work rather than a ceremony; Swachhata Pakhwada, the cleanliness fortnight taken up by each ministry in turn, and Hindi Pakhwada, which begins on Hindi Diwas, are the standard examples.

A ship carrying cotton bales and explosives caught fire in the Bombay docks on 14 April 1944; the firefighters who went aboard to douse the blaze were killed when the cargo detonated, and Fire Service Day and the week that follows commemorate them.

The week that follows, from 4 to 10 March, is used in factories, mines, ports and construction sites for safety pledges, drills, inspections and competitions, with a different theme each year.

The week is observed to strengthen national integration and communal harmony, with each day given a theme such as minorities welfare, linguistic harmony and women's day, and it closes on 25 November with Communal Harmony Flag Day.

The Central Vigilance Commission arranges the week around that date, and it opens with an integrity pledge taken in government offices and public sector undertakings; the same day is also observed as Rashtriya Ekta Diwas, the national unity day.

The two dates were chosen for two events: on 4 October 1957 the first artificial satellite, Sputnik, was placed in orbit, and on 10 October 1967 the Outer Space Treaty came into force.

Van Mahotsav was begun in 1950 on the initiative of K. M. Munshi, then the union minister for agriculture and food, and July was chosen because the monsoon has set in over most of the country by then and a sapling planted in wet ground has the best chance of…