UPSC Civil Services GK Questions 2026

The Uttarakhand Assembly passed a Uniform Civil Code Bill in February 2024, the Bill received the President's assent, and the law was brought into force in January 2025, making Uttarakhand the first state of independent India to legislate a common code on marriage, divorce, live-in relationships and succession for its…

It provides a civil form of marriage open to all Indian citizens irrespective of religion, with registration before a marriage officer after a notice period, and succession in such marriages is governed by the Indian Succession Act rather than any religious law.

Ahmed Khan v. Shah Bano Begum. In this 1985 judgment the Supreme Court allowed a divorced Muslim woman maintenance under Section 125 of the Criminal Procedure Code, a secular provision open to women of every faith, and the Court remarked that Article 44 had remained a dead letter.

The Portuguese Civil Code of 1867 was extended to Goa and continued in force after its liberation in 1961, so Goans of every religion are governed by largely the same rules on marriage, divorce and succession, with only a few community-specific usages surviving.

Part IV of the Constitution contains the Directive Principles of State Policy in Articles 36 to 51, and Article 44 on the uniform civil code is one of them.

Article 47 directs the State to regard the raising of the level of nutrition and the standard of living of its people and the improvement of public health as among its primary duties, and it adds that the State shall endeavour to bring about the prohibition of intoxicating drinks and…

Article 39(c), a directive in Part IV, requires the State to direct its policy towards ensuring that the operation of the economic system does not result in the concentration of wealth and means of production to the common detriment, and Article 39(b) asks that the ownership and control of material…

Article 40, a Directive Principle in Part IV, asks the State to organise village panchayats and to give them the powers and authority needed to function as units of self-government; it is the parent provision behind the Seventy-third Constitutional Amendment.

Part IV of the Constitution, Articles 36 to 51, sets out the goals of a welfare state: Article 38 asks the State to promote the welfare of the people and to reduce inequalities of income, status and opportunity, Article 39 directs the distribution of material resources for the common good…

Article 44 of the Constitution, placed in Part IV among the Directive Principles of State Policy, says that the State shall endeavour to secure for the citizens a uniform civil code throughout the territory of India.

The fourth Sikh Guru, Guru Ram Das, founded the settlement of Ramdaspur around the sacred tank in the late sixteenth century, and the town came to be called Amritsar after the pool of nectar, the Amrit Sarovar.

After defeating Humayun at Chausa and Kannauj, Sher Shah Suri refounded Patna in 1541 as a fortified administrative and commercial town on the ruins of ancient Pataliputra, recognising the strategic value of the site on the Ganga.

Harshavardhana of the Pushyabhuti or Vardhana dynasty began his reign at Thanesar in Haryana and, after the death of his brother-in-law Grahavarman of the Maukhari house, united the two kingdoms and made Kannauj on the Ganga his capital around the early seventh century.

The two brothers of the Sangama family founded the city of Vijayanagara on the Tungabhadra in 1336 and with it the Vijayanagara empire, which lasted until the defeat at Talikota in 1565; the ruins at Hampi in Karnataka are a World Heritage Site.

Firoz Shah Tughlaq was the greatest city builder of the Sultanate. He founded Firozabad on the Yamuna in Delhi, where the Firoz Shah Kotla stands, and outside Delhi he laid out Hisar, known as Hissar-Firoza, along with Fatehabad, Firozpur and Jaunpur, the last named in memory of Muhammad bin Tughlaq…

The Gujarat sultan Ahmad Shah I founded Ahmedabad in 1411 near the older settlement of Asaval and Karnavati, and the city became the capital of the Gujarat Sultanate and a great centre of textile trade; the Bhadra fort and the Jama Masjid date from this period.

Akbar began building Fatehpur Sikri near Agra from 1571, naming it after his victory in Gujarat, and it served as his capital for roughly fourteen years before the court returned to Agra and later moved to Lahore.

Devagiri in the Deccan, the old Yadava capital, was renamed Daulatabad by Muhammad bin Tughlaq, who ordered the transfer of the court and the population of Delhi there in 1327 so that he could control both north and south from the centre of his empire.

The fifth ruler of the Qutb Shahi dynasty founded Hyderabad in 1591 on the banks of the Musi, a short distance from the crowded hill fort of Golconda, and the Charminar was raised in his reign at the centre of the new city.

The Kachhwaha ruler Sawai Jai Singh II moved his capital down from the hill fort of Amer and founded Jaipur in 1727, laying it out on a grid of nine rectangular blocks with the help of the scholar and planner Vidyadhar Bhattacharya, which makes it the first planned city of…