UPSC Civil Services GK Questions 2026

Article 280 requires the President to constitute a Finance Commission every fifth year, or at such earlier time as the President considers necessary, consisting of a chairman and four other members.

Article 249 provides that if the Rajya Sabha declares by a resolution supported by not less than two-thirds of the members present and voting that it is necessary or expedient in the national interest, Parliament may make a law on a matter in the State List; such a law stays…

The Union government appointed a three-member Commission on Centre-State Relations in 1983 under Justice Rajinder Singh Sarkaria, a retired judge of the Supreme Court; it submitted its report in 1988 and recommended a permanent Inter-State Council, sparing use of Article 356, and consultation with States before legislating on Concurrent subjects.

Article 263 empowers the President to establish by order an Inter-State Council charged with inquiring into and advising upon disputes between States, investigating subjects of common interest, and making recommendations for better coordination of policy.

Article 254(1) lays down that where a State law is repugnant to a law made by Parliament on a Concurrent subject, the parliamentary law prevails and the State law is void to the extent of the inconsistency.

Article 248 gives Parliament the exclusive power to make a law on any matter not enumerated in the Concurrent List or the State List, and the power to impose a tax not mentioned in either of those lists; entry 97 of the Union List says the same thing from the…

Criminal procedure is an entry of the Concurrent List, List III of the Seventh Schedule, along with criminal law and the law of evidence, which is why the code of criminal procedure has always been a central law that States may amend with the President's assent.

Canning introduced the portfolio system, under which each member of the Viceroy's council was placed in charge of one or more departments of government and could issue final orders on departmental matters; the Act of 1861 gave this arrangement statutory recognition and is also remembered for beginning the association of…

The Act of 1935 divided powers into a Federal List, a Provincial List and a Concurrent List, and left residuary subjects, those appearing in none of the three lists, to the discretion of the Governor-General, that is the Viceroy.

The Morley-Minto Reforms created separate electorates in which Muslim members were elected only by Muslim voters, and for that reason Lord Minto is remembered as the father of communal electorates in India.

The Act of 1858 gave the Governor-General the additional title of Viceroy, making him the direct representative of the Crown in India, and Lord Canning, who was Governor-General during the Revolt of 1857, became the first to hold the title.

The Indian Independence Act was introduced in the British Parliament in July 1947 on the basis of the Mountbatten Plan of 3 June 1947, received royal assent on 18 July 1947 and came into effect on 15 August 1947, creating the dominions of India and Pakistan.

The White Paper of 1933 on Indian constitutional reform was examined by a Joint Select Committee of the British Parliament chaired by Lord Linlithgow, and the Bill drafted on its report became the Government of India Act of 1935; Linlithgow later served as Viceroy of India from 1936 to 1943.

Edwin Montagu, the Secretary of State for India, issued the declaration of August 1917 promising the gradual development of self-governing institutions, and together with the Viceroy Lord Chelmsford produced the report of 1918 on which the Act of 1919 was based.

The Act of 1919 is known as the Montagu-Chelmsford Reforms; the Morley-Minto Reforms were the Indian Councils Act of 1909, a decade earlier, remembered for separate electorates.

Under dyarchy the Governor kept the reserved subjects, which were those touching revenue and coercive power: administration of justice, land revenue, police, irrigation, famine relief, forests and labour relations.

This Act abolished dyarchy in the provinces and made them autonomous units, with ministries responsible to elected provincial legislatures; the first elections under it were held in 1937 and Congress ministries took office in most provinces.

There is no such method of measurement; the GDP deflator is a price index derived after the aggregates have been estimated, used to convert nominal values into real values.

Interest payments are the cost of borrowing done in earlier years, so taking them out of the fiscal deficit leaves the borrowing the government needs for this year's own activities; a zero primary deficit means the government is borrowing only to pay interest on past debt.

The fiscal deficit is the gap between what the government spends and everything it receives other than borrowings, so it measures exactly how much the government must borrow during the year and is the headline figure watched in every Budget.