UPSC Civil Services GK Questions 2026

The text of CITES was agreed by the representatives of eighty countries meeting at Washington in the United States in 1973, which is why the treaty is also called the Washington Convention; it then entered into force on 1 July 1975, and India became a party in 1976.

It is a free-floating plant of South American origin that was brought to India for its attractive flowers.

Article 343(2) allowed English for only fifteen years, to 25 January 1965, and Article 343(3) left it to Parliament to continue it by law.

Article 371J, inserted by the Ninety-eighth Amendment Act, 2012, provides a separate development board for this backward region, with reservation in education and in state government posts for people domiciled there, and it is the latest addition to the 371 series.

It was inserted by the Thirteenth Amendment Act, 1962, when Nagaland was created as a state, and it protects Naga customary law and procedure, the ownership and transfer of land and its resources, and gives the Governor a special responsibility for law and order in the state.

Article 351 is a directive to the Union to promote the spread of the Hindi language and to develop it so that it may serve as a medium of expression for all the elements of the composite culture of India.

Article 348(2) allows the Governor of a state, with the previous consent of the President, to authorise the use of Hindi or of any other language used for the official purposes of the state in the proceedings of the High Court having its principal seat in that state.

Article 344(4) provides for this committee to examine the recommendations of the Official Language Commission constituted under Article 344(1) and to report its opinion to the President.

Both were inserted by the Seventh Amendment Act, 1956, which carried out the reorganisation of states on the recommendation of the States Reorganisation Commission.

It added Bodo, Dogri, Maithili and Santhali and brought the Eighth Schedule to twenty-two languages, where it still stands.

Sindhi was the first language added to the Eighth Schedule after the Constitution came into force, taking the list from the original fourteen languages to fifteen.

Part XVII is titled Official Language and runs from Article 343 to Article 351, in four chapters: the language of the Union, regional languages, the language of the Supreme Court and the High Courts, and special directives.

Article 343 opens Part XVII of the Constitution and provides in clause (1) that the official language of the Union shall be Hindi in the Devanagari script, with the international form of Indian numerals for official purposes.

He is credited with the Samaranganasutradhara on architecture and mechanics and the Saraswatikanthabharana on poetics, and with the Bhojashala at Dhar and the great lake and Shiva temple at Bhojpur.

The Chandelas ruled Jejakabhukti, the Bundelkhand region, from Khajuraho and Mahoba, and built the Khajuraho group of temples in the Nagara style between about 950 and 1050; the Lakshmana temple belongs to Yasovarman, the Vishvanatha temple to Dhanga and the great Kandariya Mahadeva temple to Vidyadhara.

In the First Battle of Tarain in 1191 Prithviraja III of Ajmer defeated Muhammad Ghori, who was wounded and carried from the field.

The Kavirajamarga, meaning the royal road of poets, is the earliest surviving work on poetics in Kannada and is attributed to Amoghavarsha I, in whose long reign the Rashtrakuta court at Manyakheta became a centre of Kannada and Jain learning.

The Kailasa temple at Ellora, cave sixteen, was cut downwards out of a single mass of rock in his reign in the eighth century and is the largest monolithic temple in the world, dedicated to Shiva and carved with scenes from the epics.

The Pala rulers were the last great royal patrons of Buddhism in India, and Dharmapala founded Vikramashila in present-day Bhagalpur district of Bihar and also revived Nalanda and founded Odantapuri.

He was raised to the throne about 750 by the chiefs of Bengal to end a period of disorder that the Khalimpur copper plate describes with the word matsyanyaya, the law of the fishes, in which the strong devour the weak.