UPSC Civil Services GK Questions 2026

Article 217(1) originally fixed the retirement age of a High Court judge at 60 years, and the Fifteenth Constitutional Amendment Act of 1963 raised it to 62.

A five-judge Constitution Bench held that the Ninety-ninth Amendment and the NJAC Act violated the independence of the judiciary, which is part of the basic structure, mainly because the Union Law Minister and two eminent persons would sit on a body selecting judges.

Article 124A gave the National Judicial Appointments Commission six members: the Chief Justice of India as ex officio chairperson, the two next senior-most judges of the Supreme Court, the Union Minister of Law and Justice, and two eminent persons nominated by a committee consisting of the Prime Minister, the Chief…

It was brought into force in April 2015 along with the NJAC Act, 2014, and struck down by a Constitution Bench the same year.

The Second Judges Case of 1993 required the Chief Justice of India to form his opinion in consultation with his two senior-most colleagues, so the first collegium had three members.

The Court there read "consultation" literally, holding that the Chief Justice of India's opinion was not binding on the government, which therefore kept the final say in appointments.

Article 124(1) establishes the Supreme Court, and Article 124(2) provides that every judge of the Supreme Court shall be appointed by the President by warrant under his hand and seal after consultation with such judges of the Supreme Court and the High Courts as the President may deem necessary; its…

Silappadikaram, the story of the anklet, is attributed to Ilango Adigal, who tradition calls the brother of the Chera king Senguttuvan, and Manimekalai, which continues the story in a Buddhist setting, is attributed to Sattanar, also known as Chithalai Chathanar.

Statement 1 is correct, because Rock Edicts II and XIII of Ashoka name the Cholas, Pandyas, Satiyaputras and Keralaputras as peoples on the southern frontier of the Mauryan empire, and this is the firmest early date available for the chapter.

The correct answer is C, Arikamedu, on the Ariyankuppam river near modern Puducherry, where excavation uncovered Roman pottery including Arretine ware, amphora sherds that once held wine and oil, and the remains of warehouses, marking it as a trading station of the first centuries of the Christian era.

The correct answer is A, Kurinji, the hilly and forested tract whose people lived by hunting and gathering.

The poems credit him with the victory at Venni, which broke the power of a Chera and Pandya alliance, with developing Puhar at the mouth of the Kaveri, and with the embankment raised across that river.

The work belongs to the Pathinenkilkanakku, the Eighteen Minor Works, and is the most widely quoted book of Tamil literature.

It is a work on Tamil grammar and poetics in three books, and because its sections on poetic conventions describe the land, the people and their occupations, historians use it as a source for Sangam society, including the five-fold division of land into kurinji, mullai, marutham, neithal and palai.

The early Cholas ruled from Uraiyur on the Kaveri and later made Puhar, also called Kaveripattinam, their capital and chief port; their emblem was the tiger.

The Sangam corpus is the oldest body of Tamil literature and includes the grammar Tolkappiyam, the Eight Anthologies, the Ten Idylls and the Eighteen Minor Works, all in Tamil.

The correct answer is A, Nedunjeliyan II, the Pandya king of Madurai who is remembered in Sangam poetry as the victor of the battle of Talaiyalanganam, in which he is said to have defeated a confederacy of the Chera and Chola kings and five lesser chieftains.

Engel's law, named after the nineteenth century statistician Ernst Engel, says that the share of a household's spending that goes on food falls as its income rises, even though the amount spent on food may well go up.

The cash reserve ratio is the proportion of a bank's net demand and time liabilities that it must keep as cash with the Reserve Bank of India, on which it earns no interest, and the statutory liquidity ratio is the proportion it must maintain in its own hands in the…

The Lorenz curve plots the cumulative share of income against the cumulative share of population, so a straight diagonal would mean perfect equality and the more the curve sags away from that line the greater the inequality.