UPSC Civil Services GK Questions 2026

In the Lok Sabha, Question Hour runs from 11 am to noon, and the period that begins at noon, when members raise urgent matters of public importance without the usual advance notice, is popularly called Zero Hour.

Under Article 100(3), the quorum to constitute a meeting of either House of Parliament is one-tenth of the total number of members of the House, including the Speaker or the person acting as presiding officer.

Article 85(1) says the President shall summon each House to meet at such time and place as he or she thinks fit, but six months shall not intervene between its last sitting in one session and the date appointed for its first sitting in the next session.

After a general election, the Speaker of the outgoing Lok Sabha vacates office just before the new House first meets.

Ganesh Vasudev Mavalankar was elected the first Speaker of the Lok Sabha in 1952 and served until his death in 1956.

Under Article 80, the Rajya Sabha consists of 12 members nominated by the President and not more than 238 representatives of the States and Union Territories, a maximum of 250.

Article 79 says: "There shall be a Parliament for the Union which shall consist of the President and two Houses to be known respectively as the Council of States and the House of the People." The President is therefore part of Parliament even though he or she sits in neither…

Maharishi Gautama, also called Akshapada Gautama, founded the Nyaya school of Indian philosophy and wrote its basic text, the Nyaya Sutra.

The Second Anglo-Mysore War ran from 1780 to 1784. It began when the English took Mahe, a French port inside Haidar Ali's territory, and he answered by attacking the Carnatic.

The Dashavatara Temple stands at Deogarh in the Lalitpur district of Uttar Pradesh, on the banks of the Betwa, and was built of stone around the sixth century in the late Gupta period.

Robert Clive signed the two Treaties of Allahabad in August 1765, the year after the English won the Battle of Buxar.

Article 168 provides for the constitution of Legislatures in the states. It says every state shall have a Legislature made up of the Governor and either one House or two Houses.

Maulvi Liaquat Ali of Mahgaon village led the revolt of 1857 at Allahabad, now Prayagraj.

The Avesta, also called the Zend-Avesta, is the sacred book of the Zoroastrians, the followers of the prophet Zarathustra or Zoroaster of ancient Iran.

The Battle of Swally was fought in November 1612 off Suvali, a village near Surat on the Gujarat coast. A small English squadron under Captain Thomas Best defeated a larger Portuguese fleet, and the victory ended the belief that the Portuguese could not be beaten at sea in Indian waters.

The 74th Constitutional Amendment Act, 1992 inserted a new Part IX-A titled The Municipalities into the Constitution, and it came into force on 1 June 1993.

Article 161 lets the Governor grant pardons, reprieves, respites and remissions of punishment, and suspend, remit or commute the sentence of any person convicted of an offence against a law on a matter to which the executive power of the state extends.

Bamboo drip irrigation is a two-hundred-year-old practice of the Khasi and Jaintia hills of Meghalaya.

The Santhal rebellion, known as the Hul, broke out on 30 June 1855 in the Rajmahal hills of the Santhal Parganas, in what is now Jharkhand.

The Manikya dynasty ruled Tripura for centuries, and its kings all took the title Manikya. Their history is recorded in the Rajmala, a chronicle in Bengali verse first compiled in the fifteenth century under Dharma Manikya.