UPSC Civil Services GK Questions 2026

The Council was founded on 9 April 1950 by Azad, independent India's first Education Minister, who also became its first President; its headquarters in New Delhi is named Azad Bhavan after him.

Founded on 12 March 1954 with Jawaharlal Nehru as its first President, it is the national academy of letters, recognises twenty-four languages, the twenty-two of the Eighth Schedule of the Constitution together with English and Rajasthani, and gives the Sahitya Akademi Award, the Bhasha Samman and translation prizes.

At the twenty-sixth Conference of the Parties, held at Glasgow in 2021, the Prime Minister announced five pledges that came to be called Panchamrit, the last of which was net zero emissions by 2070, together with targets on non-fossil energy capacity, the share of renewable energy, the cut in projected…

The updated first Nationally Determined Contribution submitted in August 2022 raised the promise on emissions intensity, the greenhouse gas emitted per unit of gross domestic product, to a 45 per cent reduction by 2030 against the 2005 level.

That body is the implementing arm of the Namami Gange programme for cleaning the river Ganga, created under the river conservation effort and not under the climate plan; its concern is pollution in one river basin rather than greenhouse gases.

The Green India Mission is written around two halves of 5 million hectares each: new forest and tree cover on 5 million hectares of land that does not carry forest, and an improvement in the quality of the forest already standing on another 5 million hectares, so the mission's total…

That ministry is the nodal ministry for climate change in the Government of India, coordinates the plan and its reporting to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, and itself runs the National Mission for a Green India.

One of the five goals of the National Water Mission is a 20 per cent improvement in water use efficiency, alongside comprehensive water data, attention to areas most vulnerable to shortage, more recycling and better basin-level planning; the mission is handled by the Ministry of Jal Shakti.

PAT is the best known of that mission's four initiatives: large energy-using factories in notified sectors are set a target to reduce their specific energy consumption, and a unit that saves more than its target earns tradable energy saving certificates, which a unit that falls short must buy.

The Jawaharlal Nehru National Solar Mission was launched in January 2010 under the Ministry of New and Renewable Energy, with an initial target of 20,000 MW of grid-connected solar power by 2022; the target was raised to 100 GW in 2015.

The plan of 2008 works through eight National Missions: Solar, Enhanced Energy Efficiency, Sustainable Habitat, Water, Sustaining the Himalayan Ecosystem, Green India, Sustainable Agriculture, and Strategic Knowledge for Climate Change.

The National Action Plan on Climate Change was released on 30 June 2008 by the Prime Minister's Council on Climate Change, and it set out the eight National Missions through which India would act on climate change at home.

Article 18 abolishes titles: the State may not confer any title that is not a military or academic distinction, and a citizen may not accept a title from a foreign state.

The Param Vir Chakra, instituted on 26 January 1950 with effect from 15 August 1947, is India's highest award for gallantry in the face of the enemy and so takes the place the Victoria Cross held before independence; it was designed by Savitri Khanolkar and its first recipient was Major…

Queen Victoria was proclaimed Empress of India at the Delhi Durbar of 1877, and the Order of the Indian Empire was created the following year to honour a wider and more junior group of officials than the Star of India covered; its motto, Imperatricis auspiciis, means under the auspices of…

Instituted by the East India Company in 1837, the Indian Order of Merit was the oldest gallantry decoration in India and, until 1911, the only such award open to Indian soldiers, who could not then receive the Victoria Cross.

Queen Victoria instituted the Victoria Cross in 1856, and it bears the words For Valour; the award was then backdated so that acts of gallantry from 1854 onwards, during the Crimean War, could be recognised.

A sepoy of the 129th Baluchis, Khudadad Khan won the Victoria Cross for holding his machine gun position in Belgium in October 1914, becoming the first Indian to receive the decoration after Indian soldiers were made eligible for it in 1911.

After troops under General Dyer fired on a gathering at Jallianwala Bagh in Amritsar on 13 April 1919, Tagore wrote to the Viceroy, Lord Chelmsford, on 31 May 1919, renouncing the knighthood conferred on him in 1915.

Gandhi had been awarded the Kaiser-i-Hind in 1915 for raising an ambulance corps in South Africa, and in 1920 he returned it in a letter to the Viceroy, giving up two South African war medals at the same time, as part of the surrender of titles and honours that the…