UPSC Civil Services GK Questions 2026

The Constitution nowhere uses the words right to information, but the Supreme Court has held that the freedom of speech and expression guaranteed by Article 19(1)(a) is meaningless unless a citizen can know how the government works.

That Act was passed in 2002 but was never notified, so it never came into force; the RTI Act, 2005 replaced it with a stronger scheme that added time limits, penalties and independent Information Commissions, and Section 31 of the new Act repealed it.

The Act provides two appeals. Under Section 19(1) the first appeal is filed within thirty days of the reply or of the expiry of the time limit, and it goes to an officer senior in rank to the Public Information Officer within the same public authority, the First Appellate Authority.

Section 22 states that the provisions of the RTI Act have effect notwithstanding anything inconsistent in the Official Secrets Act, 1923, in any other law in force or in any instrument having effect by virtue of any other law.

Section 20(1) provides that where an Information Commission finds that a Public Information Officer has refused an application without reasonable cause, has not furnished information within the time specified, has given incorrect or misleading information or has destroyed information, it may impose a penalty of two hundred and fifty rupees…

Section 7(1) of the RTI Act lays down two limits. The ordinary limit is thirty days from the receipt of the application, but where the information sought concerns the life or liberty of a person the Public Information Officer must supply it within forty-eight hours of the request.

The RTI Act received the assent of the President on 15 June 2005, and Section 1(3) provided that the remaining provisions would come into force on the one hundred and twentieth day of its enactment.

Lord Cornwallis fought the Third Anglo-Mysore War of 1790 to 1792 against Tipu Sultan and closed it with the Treaty of Srirangapatnam; he had no connection with the Third Anglo-Maratha War, which was fought in 1817 and 1818, long after his time, and which ended with the Treaty of Mandsaur…

The Simla Agreement was signed on 2 July 1972 by Prime Minister Indira Gandhi and President Zulfikar Ali Bhutto after the war of 1971 and the creation of Bangladesh.

The declaration was signed on 10 January 1966 at Tashkent in the Soviet Union by Prime Minister Lal Bahadur Shastri and President Mohammad Ayub Khan of Pakistan, with Soviet Premier Alexei Kosygin acting as mediator; it closed the war of 1965 and provided for withdrawal to the positions held before…

The Treaty of Sugauli ended the Anglo-Nepal War fought from 1814 to 1816 in the time of Lord Hastings.

Also called the Delhi Pact, it was signed by Mahatma Gandhi and Viceroy Lord Irwin.

At the Lucknow session the Congress and the Muslim League agreed on a joint demand for self-government, and the Congress accepted separate electorates for Muslims; Bal Gangadhar Tilak and Muhammad Ali Jinnah were the chief architects, and the moderates and extremists of the Congress, divided since the Surat split of…

The Communal Award of August 1932 had given the Depressed Classes separate electorates.

Fought between 1790 and 1792 between Tipu Sultan and Lord Cornwallis, supported by the Nizam and the Marathas, it ended with the Treaty of Srirangapatnam, under which Tipu surrendered about half his territory and paid a heavy war indemnity, and two of his sons were taken as hostages.

Defeated by the Holkars at Poona, the Peshwa took shelter with the Company and signed the Treaty of Bassein in December 1802, accepting Wellesley's subsidiary alliance and a British force at his capital.

That war began after the Treaty of Surat of 1775, by which the Bombay government supported Raghunath Rao's claim to the Peshwa's seat, and it ended with the Treaty of Salbai in 1782 between Warren Hastings and Mahadji Scindia.

It was signed in 1765 by Robert Clive with the Mughal Emperor Shah Alam II and Nawab Shuja-ud-Daula of Awadh after the Company's victory at Buxar in 1764.

Charles Fourier and Saint-Simon were French thinkers of the early nineteenth century who, with Robert Owen in Britain, argued that competition should be replaced by cooperative and planned communities in which property is held in common.

Consumer sovereignty means that the spending of consumers decides what is produced: a producer who makes what buyers do not want earns no profit and leaves the business, so in a market economy the consumer is said to rule.