UPSC Civil Services GK Questions 2026

The Sone canal system takes off at Dehri in Rohtas district, where a weir across the Sone feeds the eastern and western main canals that water Rohtas, Aurangabad, Gaya, Patna and Bhojpur; it is the oldest major canal work of the state and the mainstay of irrigation in south Bihar.

West Bengal grows far more jute than any other state, and Bihar comes next, its crop concentrated in the north-eastern districts of Purnia, Katihar, Araria and Kishanganj, where high rainfall, standing water for retting and alluvial soil suit the fibre.

The tal lands are low saucer shaped tracts of south Bihar that fill with water during the monsoon and cannot carry a kharif crop; as the water drains in October and November the moist soil gives an excellent rabi crop of gram, lentil, pea and khesari, and Mokama Tal is…

Magahi paan takes its name from the Magadh region and is grown in Gaya, Nawada, Aurangabad and Nalanda, where the soft leaf with its sweet taste and lack of sharpness has made it famous; it carries a geographical indication tag of its own.

The Shahi litchi of Muzaffarpur and the neighbouring districts of north Bihar is known for its thin skin, small stone and high juice content, it received a geographical indication tag in 2018, and Muzaffarpur is called the litchi capital of the country and houses the National Research Centre on Litchi.

Cotton is a kharif crop, sown with the onset of the monsoon in June and July and picked from October onwards, because it needs warmth and rainfall during growth and dry weather at picking.

The makhana research centre is at Darbhanga, in the heart of the Mithila makhana belt, and work there covers pond management, the harvesting and popping process and improved varieties such as Swarna Vaidehi.

Mithila Makhana was registered as a geographical indication in 2022, the tag going to a producers body of the Mithila region so that growers of Darbhanga, Madhubani and the neighbouring districts, rather than traders elsewhere, gain from the name.

Makhana is the seed of Euryale ferox, a thorny aquatic plant of still shallow water whose large round leaves cover the surface of ponds and chaurs; the seeds are gathered from the pond bed, dried, roasted and popped into the white kernels sold as makhana or phool makhana.

It needs tall wet grassland and will not survive in dry forest, so its fate is tied to the Terai, and the herds of Dudhwa and Kishanpur are among the largest anywhere; the Hastinapur sanctuary protects the separate population of the Ganga plain.

The TX2 award, named for the global goal of doubling wild tiger numbers, was given for the first time in 2020, and the Pilibhit Tiger Reserve in the Terai of Uttar Pradesh received it after its tiger count rose sharply in the years following its notification as a tiger reserve.

The sanctuary covers a stretch of the Ganga at Varanasi and was created so that turtles released into the river could clean it of organic waste and the species themselves be protected from the trade in shells and meat.

The stretch is valued because it still carries the Gangetic dolphin, the gharial, turtles and large numbers of wintering waterbirds in a river that is heavily used elsewhere.

The sarus is the tallest flying bird in the world, standing about as high as a man, and it nests in the shallow marshes and flooded fields of Mainpuri, Etawah, Etah and Aligarh, which makes Uttar Pradesh its stronghold in India; the pair that stays together for life has made…

Lions brought from the Gir forest of Gujarat were released there in the late 1950s and bred for a few years, but poaching and the small size of the forest wiped the group out, and the experiment is now cited as the first attempt to give the Asiatic lion a…

The Girwa flows out of Nepal through Bahraich district, and its clear, deep stretch inside Katarniaghat is one of the few places in India where the gharial and the Gangetic dolphin are found together, which is why the sanctuary is treated as a key gharial breeding site.

The Hastinapur wildlife sanctuary stretches along the Ganga across Meerut, Bijnor, Muzaffarnagar, Amroha, Hapur and Ghaziabad, which makes it the largest sanctuary of the state and one that spans the most districts; it protects the swamp deer of the Ganga plain and includes the Haiderpur wetland, a Ramsar site.

The park lies in the Terai of Lakhimpur Kheri along the Nepal border, and the Kishanpur sanctuary, which forms part of the same tiger reserve, is in the same district.

Dudhwa, in Lakhimpur Kheri district on the Indo-Nepal border, was declared a national park in 1977 and remains the only national park in Uttar Pradesh; everything else protected in the state is a wildlife sanctuary, a tiger reserve or a conservation reserve.

The Aravalli runs from the south-west to the north-east, which is the same direction in which the Arabian Sea branch travels, so the winds slide along the range instead of being forced up over it; without that lifting there is little cooling and little rain, and the moisture is carried…