UPSC Civil Services GK Questions 2026

Ibn Battuta was a Moroccan traveller from Tangier who reached Delhi in the reign of Muhammad bin Tughlaq, was taken into royal service as qazi or judge of the capital and was later sent as an envoy to China.

The Khalji dynasty ended in 1320 when Khusrau Khan, who had seized the throne after Mubarak Shah Khalji, was defeated by Ghazi Malik, the governor of Dipalpur.

Muhammad bin Tughlaq, who ruled from 1325 to 1351, issued bronze and copper coins that were to pass at the value of silver.

Kharaj was the land tax on agricultural produce and the single largest source of revenue for the Delhi Sultanate. Alauddin Khalji raised the demand to half the produce in the doab and had land measured for assessment.

Alauddin Khalji, who ruled from 1296 to 1316, wanted a standing army paid directly by the state and under his own eye.

The Adhai-din-ka-Jhonpra stands at Ajmer in Rajasthan and was raised on the site of an earlier Sanskrit college by Qutbuddin Aibak, the founder of the Slave dynasty and the first Sultan of Delhi.

Shamsuddin Iltutmish, who ruled from 1211 to 1236, moved the seat of government from Lahore to Delhi, completed the Qutb Minar that his father-in-law had begun, issued the silver tanka and the copper jital, organised the iqta system of land assignments and formed the Turkan-i-Chihalgani, the corps of forty Turkish…

The Khalji or Khilji dynasty held the throne of Delhi only from 1290, when Jalaluddin Khalji seized power, to 1320, when Khusrau Khan was overthrown by Ghazi Malik.

Article 267 allows Parliament by law to establish a Contingency Fund of India, held at the disposal of the President so that advances can be made for unforeseen expenditure before Parliament authorises it; the amount is afterwards recouped from the Consolidated Fund through a supplementary appropriation.

The Fiscal Responsibility and Budget Management Act was passed by Parliament in 2003 and brought into force in 2004.

A direct tax is one whose burden cannot be shifted: the person or company assessed both pays it and bears it.

K. C. Neogy chaired the first Finance Commission, which was constituted in 1951 under Article 280 soon after the Constitution came into force, and whose recommendations covered the sharing of income tax and union excise duties with the States.

Article 112 requires the President to cause a statement of the estimated receipts and expenditure of the Government of India for every financial year to be laid before both Houses of Parliament, and that statement is the Annual Financial Statement.

Primary deficit equals fiscal deficit minus interest payments. Interest is the price of borrowing done in earlier years, so removing it leaves the gap created by the current year's own decisions on spending and taxation, which is why economists read the primary deficit as a measure of present fiscal discipline.

The State Finance Commission owes its existence directly to the Constitution: Article 243-I, added by the seventy-third Amendment, requires the Governor to constitute it every fifth year for the Panchayats, and Article 243-Y extends the arrangement to the Municipalities.

Article 243-I, inserted by the seventy-third Constitutional Amendment of 1992, requires the Governor of a State to constitute a Finance Commission at the expiration of every fifth year to review the financial position of the Panchayats and to recommend how taxes, duties, tolls and fees should be divided between the…

Fiscal deficit measures the whole amount the government must borrow in a year, because it compares everything it spends with everything it earns from taxes, non-tax revenue, recovery of loans and disinvestment, leaving borrowing out of the receipts side.

The Finance Commission is constituted by the President under Article 280, and it therefore makes its recommendations to the President.

Statement A is correct: Article 280 provides that the Commission shall consist of a Chairman and four other members appointed by the President.

Article 280 requires the President to constitute a Finance Commission at the expiration of every fifth year, or earlier if the President considers it necessary, consisting of a Chairman and four other members, and lists the matters on which it is to make recommendations.