UPSC Civil Services GK Questions 2026

Set up in 1981 and based at Dehradun, it assesses the country's forest and tree cover from satellite data and brings out the India State of Forest Report once every two years, giving the cover state by state and by density class.

The Montreal Protocol was adopted under the Vienna Convention of 1985 and sets a timetable for phasing out chlorofluorocarbons, halons and similar chemicals.

The convention was signed in 1971 at Ramsar, a town in Iran, and is the oldest of the modern global conservation treaties.

It added Article 48A to the directive principles, asking the state to protect and improve the environment and to safeguard forests and wildlife, and Article 51A, clause g, to the fundamental duties, laying the same obligation on every citizen.

The Authority was set up under the Biological Diversity Act of 2002 and is based at Chennai in Tamil Nadu.

The Board was created by that Act to advise the central government, to lay down standards for effluents and to coordinate the work of the State Pollution Control Boards, which were set up by the same law in the states.

The National Green Tribunal Act was passed in 2010 and the tribunal began work in the same year, to provide quick and specialised disposal of cases on environmental protection and forest conservation.

The Act was passed in the wake of the Bhopal gas tragedy and gives the central government a general power to take any measure it considers necessary to protect and improve the quality of the environment.

The National Clean Air Programme was launched by the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change in January 2019 as a national framework to cut particulate pollution in cities that do not meet the national ambient air quality standards.

The Stockholm Convention was adopted in 2001 and came into force in 2004.

Founded in 1948 and based in Switzerland, it maintains the Red List of Threatened Species, which grades species as least concern, near threatened, vulnerable, endangered, critically endangered, extinct in the wild or extinct.

On the night of 2 and 3 December 1984, methyl isocyanate gas leaked from the pesticide plant of Union Carbide India Limited at Bhopal in Madhya Pradesh, killing thousands of people and injuring many more.

The Sengol is a gold-plated silver sceptre topped by a figure of Nandi. In the Chola tradition, a new king received such a sceptre from a high priest as a symbol of the transfer of power and of the ruler's duty to govern justly.

The Constitution (106th Amendment) Act, 2023, known as the Nari Shakti Vandan Adhiniyam, reserves one-third of all seats for women in the Lok Sabha, the State Legislative Assemblies and the Legislative Assembly of Delhi, including one-third of the seats already reserved for Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes.

The Tenth Schedule was added by the 52nd Amendment Act, 1985 to curb the practice of legislators switching parties for office or money.

The Estimates Committee of independent India was first constituted in 1950, on the recommendation of John Mathai, the Finance Minister.

The Public Accounts Committee has 22 members: 15 elected by the Lok Sabha and 7 elected by the Rajya Sabha, every year, by proportional representation through the single transferable vote.

The Constitution never uses the word "budget"; it speaks instead of the "Annual Financial Statement", a statement of the estimated receipts and expenditure of the Government of India for the year, which the President causes to be laid before both Houses under Article 112.

When the two Houses disagree on an ordinary bill, because one House rejects it, the Houses disagree on amendments, or more than six months pass without the other House passing it, the President can summon a joint sitting to resolve the deadlock.

Under Article 109, a money bill can be introduced only in the Lok Sabha. After the Lok Sabha passes it, the bill goes to the Rajya Sabha, which must return it within 14 days from the date of receipt, with or without recommendations.