UPSC Civil Services GK Questions 2026

Begum Hazrat Mahal was a wife of Wajid Ali Shah, the last Nawab of Awadh, who had been deposed and sent to Calcutta in 1856.

Under this policy of Lord Dalhousie, a dependent princely state whose ruler died without a natural heir lapsed to the Company, and adoption was not accepted; Satara, Jaitpur, Sambalpur, Nagpur and Jhansi were taken over in this way, and Jhansi was annexed in 1854 after the death of Gangadhar Rao.

Lakshmibai was born at Varanasi in 1828 in a Marathi Brahmin family and was named Manikarnika, called Manu at home; she took the name Lakshmibai on her marriage to Gangadhar Rao, the ruler of Jhansi.

Chand Bibi, also called Chand Sultana, was the daughter of Hussain Nizam Shah of Ahmadnagar and the wife of Ali Adil Shah of Bijapur, and she acted as regent in both kingdoms.

Ahilyabai Holkar ruled from 1767 to 1795 and shifted her seat to Maheshwar on the north bank of the Narmada, which became a centre of administration, temple building and handloom weaving; the Maheshwari sari is still named after it.

Rani Durgavati ruled the Gond kingdom of Garha-Katanga, in the region of present Madhya Pradesh called Gondwana, and governed as regent for her young son after her husband death.

Rudramadevi was the daughter of the Kakatiya ruler Ganapatideva and ruled the Kakatiya kingdom of Warangal, in present Telangana, in the second half of the thirteenth century; she is one of the very few women to have governed a southern kingdom in her own name, and her grandson Prataparudra II…

Razia was the daughter of Iltutmish of the Slave or Mamluk dynasty, who nominated her over his sons, and she ruled Delhi from 1236 to 1240 with the title Jalalat-ud-din, the only woman to occupy that throne.

The account is opened by a guardian in the name of a girl child before she completes ten years of age, deposits are made for the first fifteen years, and the account matures twenty-one years from the date it was opened; a part withdrawal is allowed for higher education after…

A ULIP is sold by an insurance company, which puts one part of the premium towards life cover and invests the rest in funds chosen by the policyholder; because the contract is a policy of insurance, it is regulated by the Insurance Regulatory and Development Authority of India, set up…

An open-ended scheme has no fixed maturity; the fund house keeps creating and cancelling units, so an investor may buy or redeem on any working day at the NAV declared for that day, which is why most schemes sold today are open-ended.

The Pension Fund Regulatory and Development Authority, which was given statutory status by the PFRDA Act of 2013, regulates the National Pension System and the Atal Pension Yojana, appoints the pension fund managers and the central record keeping agency, and prescribes the Tier I and Tier II account structure.

In an SIP the same sum is invested at fixed intervals, so it automatically buys more units when the NAV is low and fewer when it is high; over a full market cycle the average cost per unit therefore works out lower than a lump sum invested at a high…

An ETF is listed on a stock exchange and traded through a broker in a demat account at prices that move during market hours, which is what separates it from every other kind of scheme.

An ELSS is an equity mutual fund scheme that qualifies for the deduction allowed on specified savings, and each instalment is locked in for three years from the date of investment, which is the shortest lock-in among the instruments eligible for that deduction.

The AMC is appointed by the trustees, is registered with SEBI and runs the schemes from day to day: it employs the fund managers, decides which securities to buy and sell, and is paid a management fee out of the scheme.

The Unit Trust of India was established in 1963 by an Act of Parliament and launched its first scheme, Unit Scheme 1964 or US-64, in the following year; it held a monopoly of the business until 1987.

The NAV is the per unit book value of a scheme: take the market value of all the securities and cash the scheme holds, subtract its liabilities and accrued expenses, and divide by the number of units outstanding.

Mutual funds in India are registered with and regulated by the Securities and Exchange Board of India under the SEBI (Mutual Funds) Regulations, 1996, which lay down the three-tier structure of sponsor, trustees and asset management company, the scheme categories, the cap on the expense ratio and the disclosures a…

Anamudi, about 2,695 metres high, rises in the Anaimalai hills of the Idukki district of Kerala and is the highest peak of the Western Ghats and of the whole peninsular plateau south of the Himalayas; the Eravikulam National Park around it shelters the Nilgiri tahr.