UPSC Civil Services GK Questions 2026

Sulphur dioxide, released when coal and oil containing sulphur are burnt, is oxidised in the atmosphere to sulphur trioxide, which dissolves in water droplets to give sulphuric acid.

Carbon monoxide binds to the haemoglobin of the blood roughly two hundred times more readily than oxygen does, and the carboxyhaemoglobin so formed cannot carry oxygen.

Photochemical smog, also called Los Angeles smog, forms in warm, dry, sunny weather when oxides of nitrogen from vehicle exhaust and unburnt hydrocarbons react under ultraviolet light.

A secondary pollutant is never emitted from a source; it is manufactured in the atmosphere itself when primary pollutants react with one another or with sunlight.

He was the founder of Rashtrakuta power and overthrew the last important Chalukya of Badami, Kirtivarman II, about 753 CE.

The Nayanars were the Shaiva saints of the Tamil bhakti movement, traditionally counted as sixty-three, and they included Appar, Sambandar, Sundarar and Manikkavachakar.

The Pandyas ruled the extreme south of the peninsula from Madurai on the Vaigai, with the pearl-fishing port of Korkai on the coast.

He reached India in 630 CE, stayed for about fifteen years, and studied Yogachara philosophy at the Nalanda mahavihara under its head, the aged monk Shilabhadra.

He ruled in the early eighth century and marks the structural phase of Pallava architecture, when temples were built up of dressed stone instead of being cut from living rock.

He is also called Mamalla, the great wrestler, and the port city of Mamallapuram or Mahabalipuram takes its name from that title.

Harsha inherited Thanesar in modern Haryana from the Pushyabhuti family. When his sister Rajyashri's husband Grahavarman, the Maukhari king of Kannauj, was killed, Harsha united the two realms and moved his seat to Kannauj on the Ganga, which then became the symbol of paramountcy in northern India for the next…

The Aihole inscription was composed in Sanskrit by Ravikirti, the Jain court poet of the Chalukya king Pulakeshin II of Badami.

Banabhatta was the court poet of Harsha in the seventh century CE. He wrote the Harshacharita, the biography of his patron and the first historical biography in Sanskrit, and the prose romance Kadambari, which was completed by his son Bhushanabhatta.

Harshavardhana was a dramatist as well as a king, and three Sanskrit plays are credited to him: Ratnavali, Priyadarshika and Nagananda.

Shashanka was the king of Gauda, the region of Bengal with its centre at Karnasuvarna. He killed Harsha's elder brother Rajyavardhana, and it was to avenge that killing, and to recover his sister Rajyashri, that Harsha declared war and allied with Bhaskaravarman of Kamarupa.

Harishena belonged to an earlier century altogether: he was the court poet of Samudragupta and composed the Prayag Prashasti, the Allahabad Pillar Inscription.

Statement one is correct because the securities transaction tax is charged on the purchase and sale of securities on a recognised stock exchange and is borne by the investor who makes the transaction; the burden cannot be passed on to anybody else, which is the test of a direct tax…

Article 279A provides that a decision of the Council needs a majority of not less than three fourths of the weighted votes of the members present and voting, with the vote of the Centre carrying one third of the total votes cast and the votes of all the state governments…

It was levied on the net wealth of individuals, Hindu undivided families and companies, but it collected very little compared with the effort of assessing it, so it was withdrawn in 2015 and replaced by an additional surcharge on very high incomes.

France adopted the value added tax in 1954, and the idea of taxing only the value added at each stage, with credit for the tax paid earlier, spread from there to most of the world.