UPSC Civil Services GK Questions 2026

The India-Australia Economic Cooperation and Trade Agreement, abbreviated ECTA, was signed in April 2022 and came into force in December 2022 as an interim step towards a wider comprehensive agreement.

A customs union removes duties on trade among its members and, in addition, requires every member to levy the same tariff on goods coming from outside the union, which is the common external tariff.

At the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership summit held in Bangkok in November 2019, India announced that it would not join the agreement.

The India-UAE Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement was signed on 18 February 2022 and came into force on 1 May 2022, a gap of barely ten weeks that makes it one of the fastest agreements India has brought into operation.

The India-Mauritius Comprehensive Economic Cooperation and Partnership Agreement, or CECPA, took effect in 2021 and is the first trade agreement India concluded with any African country.

The European Free Trade Association has exactly four members today: Iceland, Liechtenstein, Norway and Switzerland. Denmark was among the seven countries that set up EFTA in 1960, but it left to join the European Communities and is today a member of the European Union, not of EFTA.

TEPA was signed on 10 March 2024 in New Delhi with the four EFTA states, Iceland, Liechtenstein, Norway and Switzerland, and came into force on 1 October 2025.

India has no bilateral free trade agreement with Brazil. Its only preferential link with Brazil is through the limited India-MERCOSUR Preferential Trade Agreement, which covers a short list of products at reduced duty and is not a free trade agreement.

The Ministry of Cooperation is examining a proposal for a common cooperative digital platform to market cooperative products and farm produce more effectively, and the Secretary informed participants that the Open Network for Digital Commerce had offered its support for the initiative.

The Secretary of the Ministry of Cooperation explained that the recent amendment to the National Cooperative Development Corporation Act has paved the way for extending assistance to such bodies, which opens a direct route for various State-level institutions to draw funds from the Corporation, and he urged States to make…

The workshop gave special attention to building stronger value chains in exports, organic products and seeds through these three national cooperative institutions, and to empowering primary cooperative institutions through them.

The Secretary of the Ministry told the inaugural session that the suggestion to hold a workshop on cooperative development in Bastar, a district long affected by Left Wing Extremism, had come from Union Home Minister and Minister of Cooperation Shri Amit Shah, which is precisely what makes the venue worth…

On the second day the Division Bench comprising Members Justice (Dr.) Bidyut Ranjan Sarangi and Smt. Vijaya Bharathi Sayani heard thirty-three cases, which included compliance matters as well as fresh complaints, and three of them were taken up out of turn on a mention made by the complainant.

In the case concerning the rape and murder of a ten-year-old girl in the Maner area of Patna district, the Commission recommended payment of Rs 5 lakh as relief to the next of kin of the victim.

The correct answer is Justice V. Ramasubramanian, the Chairperson of the National Human Rights Commission, who led the two-day Bihar open hearing and camp sitting at Patna and heard the bonded labour matters on the second day himself.

The Commission, led by Chairperson Justice V. Ramasubramanian along with Members Justice (Dr.) Bidyut Ranjan Sarangi and Smt. Vijaya Bharathi Sayani, took up more than seventy alleged cases of human rights violation in the presence of the victims and the officers answerable for them, with the State Chief Secretary and…

The distinction worth holding on to is between the largest overall contributor and the largest single payment.

The receipts of the National Biodiversity Authority come in under that Act read with the Access and Benefit Sharing Regulations, which require users of Indian biological resources to share benefits with the country and with the communities that conserve those resources.

The agri-seed sector accounted for the largest share of the receipts at Rs 7.16 crore, well ahead of every other category.

The National Biodiversity Authority received that amount from users of India biological resources in the half year from 1 April 2026 to 30 September 2026, under the Biological Diversity Act, 2002, as amended in 2023, read with the Access and Benefit Sharing Regulations.