UPSC Civil Services GK Questions 2026

At the Lucknow session of December 1916, presided over by Ambica Charan Mazumdar, the moderates and the extremists were reunited and the Congress and the Muslim League agreed on a joint scheme of political reform, accepting separate electorates for Muslims; that agreement is the Lucknow Pact.

Jana Gana Mana, composed by Rabindranath Tagore, was sung for the first time on 27 December 1911 at the Calcutta session of the Congress, and the first stanza was adopted as the national anthem by the Constituent Assembly on 24 January 1950.

The Nagpur session, presided over by C. Vijayaraghavachariar, confirmed the Non-Cooperation programme begun at the Calcutta special session of September 1920 and rewrote the organisation from top to bottom: a Working Committee of fifteen members was created, the provincial committees were reorganised on linguistic lines, the membership fee was lowered…

The Karachi session, presided over by Vallabhbhai Patel, endorsed the Gandhi-Irwin Pact and adopted the resolution on Fundamental Rights and the National Economic Programme, which promised free speech, free press, equality before law, a living wage and state ownership of key industries; the draft is attributed to Jawaharlal Nehru.

The Belgaum session in Karnataka is the only session of the Congress over which Mahatma Gandhi presided, and in his presidential year he worked chiefly for Hindu-Muslim unity, khadi and the removal of untouchability.

She presided over the Calcutta session of 1917 and was the first woman president of the Congress, in the same years in which she was leading the Home Rule League.

At Surat the two wings of the Congress quarrelled over the choice of president and over how far the boycott and swadeshi programme should be carried; the session broke up in disorder, Rash Behari Ghosh was declared president, and the Congress stayed divided until 1916.

Bose was re-elected president at the Tripuri session of 1939 after defeating Pattabhi Sitaramayya, but the Working Committee would not serve under him; he resigned in April 1939 and Rajendra Prasad was asked to take the chair for the remainder of the year.

The Lahore session of December 1929, presided over by Jawaharlal Nehru, declared complete independence to be the goal of the Congress and called upon the country to observe 26 January 1930 as Independence Day; the tricolour was hoisted on the bank of the Ravi on 31 December 1929.

Womesh Chandra Bonnerjee, a Calcutta barrister, presided over the first session of the Congress at the Gokuldas Tejpal Sanskrit College in Bombay from 28 to 31 December 1885, attended by seventy-two delegates.

The committee headed by the industrialist Baba Kalyani submitted its report on the special economic zone policy in 2018, arguing that the zones should be judged by the economic activity and employment they create rather than by exports alone, and recommending a new framework of employment and economic enclaves serving…

A supply to a developer or a unit of a special economic zone for authorised operations is a zero-rated supply, so the supplier either pays the tax and claims a refund or supplies under a letter of undertaking without paying it, and in either case the credit of the tax…

The central obligation of a zone unit is a positive net foreign exchange earning, that is the value of its exports must exceed the value of its imports, measured over a block of five years counted from the date the unit begins production, and not year by year.

Under the Act of 2005 proposals for a zone go to the Board of Approval in the Department of Commerce, which the Commerce Secretary chairs and on which the revenue, finance and other departments are represented; below it each notified zone has a Development Commissioner and a Unit Approval Committee…

The Export Credit Guarantee Corporation, founded in 1957 and first called the Export Risks Insurance Corporation, insures an Indian exporter against the commercial risk of a buyer failing to pay and the political risk of war, exchange restrictions or a ban in the buyer's country, and it also guarantees the…

The Export-Import Bank of India was set up in 1982 under the Export-Import Bank of India Act of 1981, as the country's apex institution for financing and promoting foreign trade; it lends to exporters, finances overseas buyers of Indian goods and operates the lines of credit extended by the Government…

The Directorate General of Foreign Trade works under the Department of Commerce in that ministry; it issues the importer-exporter code without which no one can trade across the border, administers the Foreign Trade Policy, and exercises powers under the Foreign Trade (Development and Regulation) Act of 1992.

The earlier merchandise exports scheme was held to be inconsistent with world trade rules because it gave an incentive directly on exports, so it was replaced by a scheme that only refunds the duties and taxes embedded in an exported product which no other scheme refunds.

The law deems a special economic zone to be outside the customs territory of India for trade operations, duties and tariffs, which is why a supply from the rest of the country into the zone is an export and a sale from the zone into the rest of the country…

The Special Economic Zones Act was passed by Parliament in 2005 and was brought into force in February 2006 together with the Special Economic Zones Rules, giving the zones a single law of their own in place of a chapter of the trade policy.