UPSC Civil Services GK Questions 2026

The Prime Minister commissioned INS Vikrant at Kochi on 2 September 2022; built by Cochin Shipyard, it is the first aircraft carrier designed and built in India and it carries the name of the older Vikrant that served in the 1971 war.

India keeps two ladders of gallantry awards. Away from the battlefield the order is Ashoka Chakra, Kirti Chakra and Shaurya Chakra, so Ashoka Chakra stands highest in peacetime.

Nag is a third generation fire and forget anti tank missile of the IGMDP, and its helicopter launched version is called Helina.

BrahMos is built by a joint venture of India and Russia, and its name joins the Brahmaputra of India with the Moskva of Russia; it is a supersonic cruise missile that flies at nearly three times the speed of sound and can be launched from land, ships, submarines and aircraft.

The Integrated Guided Missile Development Programme was approved in 1983 and run under his leadership at the Defence Research and Development Laboratory, which is why he is called the Missile Man of India; it produced Prithvi, Agni, Trishul, Akash and Nag.

The National Defence Academy is the only academy in which cadets of the Army, Navy and Air Force undergo joint training before moving to their own service academies for pre commission training.

On the night of 4 December 1971 Indian missile boats attacked Karachi harbour in Operation Trident, sinking Pakistani vessels without loss, and the Navy marks the date as Navy Day.

On 15 January 1949 General K. M. Cariappa took charge as the first Indian Commander in Chief of the Indian Army, replacing the last British holder of the post, and the day has been observed as Army Day ever since.

Article 53 of the Constitution vests the supreme command of the defence forces of the Union in the President, and the exercise of that command is regulated by law; commissions to officers are granted in the President's name.

The Department of Biotechnology was created in 1986 under the Ministry of Science and Technology to give the subject a separate home, and it supports institutions, fellowships and national facilities; the Review Committee on Genetic Manipulation also works under it.

The two polypeptide chains of the hormone are made in genetically engineered bacteria and then joined by disulphide bonds, giving insulin identical to the human hormone, which ended the dependence on insulin extracted from the pancreas of cattle and pigs and the allergy that sometimes followed.

Rhizobium lives in symbiosis in the root nodules of pulses and fixes atmospheric nitrogen into a form the plant can use, which enriches the soil and reduces the need for nitrogen fertiliser.

A single plant cell retains the capacity to divide and differentiate into every tissue and so to regenerate a whole plant, which is why an explant grown on a sterile nutrient medium can form callus and then complete plantlets.

Plant breeding is the deliberate improvement of crops by choosing parents with desirable characters, crossing them, selecting among the progeny and multiplying the best lines; the high yielding wheat and rice varieties of the Green Revolution came from it, and modern breeding is often combined with tissue culture and marker…

Working under the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change, it is the apex committee under the rules of 1989 framed under the Environment (Protection) Act, 1986, and no genetically engineered organism may be released into the environment or used on a large scale without its clearance.

Golden rice was engineered to make beta carotene, the precursor from which the body forms vitamin A, in the edible part of the grain, and the pigment gives the rice its golden colour; the aim was to reduce night blindness among populations living mainly on rice.

He devised the polymerase chain reaction, which copies a selected stretch of DNA millions of times through repeated cycles of heating and cooling, using the heat resistant Taq polymerase, and he received the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for it.

Approved in 2002, it is the only genetically modified crop cleared for commercial cultivation by Indian farmers, and it is grown for fibre rather than as food.

The cry genes of Bt cotton come from Bacillus thuringiensis, a soil bacterium that forms crystal protein during sporulation; the protein is inactive as eaten but becomes a toxin in the alkaline gut of the bollworm, which is why the plant resists the pest.

Dholavira stands on Khadir island in the Rann of Kachchh and is known for its careful division into citadel, middle town and lower town, its series of stone water reservoirs and the so called signboard of large Harappan letters.