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UPSC Civil Services GK Questions 2026

Static general knowledge is six of the seven lines of the General Studies Paper-I syllabus in the UPSC CSE notice: History of India and the Indian National Movement; Indian and World Geography; Indian Polity and Governance; Economic and Social Development; Environmental Ecology, Bio-diversity and Climate Change; and General Science. The Commission tests understanding rather than recall, through statements to be judged correct or incorrect, pairs to be matched and assertion-reason items, and it likes the edges of a topic: a lesser-known provision of the Constitution, a river's tributary, a species' conservation status, the mandate of a statutory body. This page holds GK24's topic-wise GK notes for UPSC, written as short facts and tables, in English and Hindi, with each note linked to the current affairs and previous-year questions on the same topic. Start with Polity and Modern History, which carry the most questions, then Geography, the Economy, Environment, Ancient and Medieval culture and Science. Read a note, solve its PYQs, take its quiz, and come back to it in your monthly revision. A candidate who knows these notes and reads the daily current affairs has covered the syllabus the notice prescribes for Paper-I.

UPSC Civil Services GK Questions with Answers

Q8942.Static GKHard

Inquiry commissions such as the Shah Commission and the Liberhan Commission are appointed under which law?

  1. A.The Commissions of Inquiry Act, 1952
  2. B.The Code of Criminal Procedure, 1973
  3. C.The Judicial Officers Protection Act, 1850
  4. D.The Public Servants Inquiries Act, 1850
Show answer
Correct answer: A. The Commissions of Inquiry Act, 1952

Under this Act the central or a state government may appoint a commission to inquire into any definite matter of public importance, and must do so if Parliament or the state legislature passes a resolution to that effect.

Q8943.Static GKMedium

Which one of the following is a constitutional body?

  1. A.National Human Rights Commission
  2. B.Finance Commission
  3. C.NITI Aayog
  4. D.National Commission for Women
Show answer
Correct answer: B. Finance Commission

It is created by Article 280 of the Constitution, which requires the President to constitute it every fifth year or earlier to recommend the distribution of the net proceeds of taxes between the Union and the states, the principles governing grants-in-aid and other matters referred to it.

Q8947.Static GKMedium

Who was the chairman of the States Reorganisation Commission set up in 1953?

  1. A.Justice Fazl Ali
  2. B.K. M. Panikkar
  3. C.H. N. Kunzru
  4. D.S. K. Dhar
Show answer
Correct answer: A. Justice Fazl Ali

After the death of Potti Sriramulu and the creation of Andhra State in 1953, the government appointed the States Reorganisation Commission under Justice Saiyid Fazl Ali, with the historian K. M. Panikkar and the educationist Hriday Nath Kunzru as its other two members.

Q8950.Static GKMedium

Which committee recommended the three-tier structure of panchayati raj in India?

  1. A.Ashok Mehta Committee
  2. B.Balwant Rai Mehta Committee
  3. C.L. M. Singhvi Committee
  4. D.G. V. K. Rao Committee
Show answer
Correct answer: B. Balwant Rai Mehta Committee

Appointed in 1957 to examine the working of the community development programme, it reported that development could not succeed without democratic decentralisation and recommended a three-tier structure: the gram panchayat at the village level, the panchayat samiti at the block level and the zila parishad at the district level, with…

Q8954.Science & TechnologyHard

A fifty-one per cent attack on a blockchain refers to a situation where an attacker

  1. A.Guesses the private keys of more than half the users
  2. B.Controls more than half the mining power or staked coins of the network
  3. C.Owns more than half the coins in circulation
  4. D.Shuts down more than half the nodes of the network
Show answer
Correct answer: B. Controls more than half the mining power or staked coins of the network

A fifty-one per cent attack is one in which a single party commands a majority of the resource that decides consensus, which is the mining power in a proof of work chain and the staked coins in a proof of stake chain.

Q8957.Science & TechnologyHard

The rate of tax deducted at source on payment made for the transfer of a virtual digital asset in India is

  1. A.One per cent
  2. B.Two per cent
  3. C.Five per cent
  4. D.Ten per cent
Show answer
Correct answer: A. One per cent

From July 2022 a person paying any consideration for the transfer of a virtual digital asset must deduct tax at source at one per cent of that consideration, a provision introduced by the Finance Act of 2022 so that the tax department can see the volume and the parties in…

Q8959.Science & TechnologyEasy

Blockchain is best described as a form of

  1. A.Centralised relational database
  2. B.Distributed ledger technology
  3. C.Cloud storage service
  4. D.Operating system
Show answer
Correct answer: B. Distributed ledger technology

A blockchain is a ledger whose identical copies are held by many nodes, with new entries grouped into blocks, each linked to the previous one by its hash, and added only when the network agrees by a consensus rule.

Q8960.Science & TechnologyHard

In a blockchain, the structure that summarises all the transactions in a block into a single hash is called

  1. A.The nonce
  2. B.The Merkle root
  3. C.The genesis block
  4. D.The private key
Show answer
Correct answer: B. The Merkle root

The transactions in a block are hashed in pairs, the resulting hashes are hashed in pairs again, and the process repeats until a single hash remains; that hash is the Merkle root, named after Ralph Merkle, and it is stored in the block header.