UPSC GK Questions 2026

Article 54 says the President shall be elected by an electoral college consisting of the elected members of both Houses of Parliament and the elected members of the Legislative Assemblies of the States, the Assemblies of Delhi and Puducherry having been added by the Seventieth Amendment.

When Dr. Zakir Husain died on 3 May 1969, Shri V. V. Giri was the Vice-President, and under Article 65 the Vice-President discharges the functions of the President during such a vacancy.

He took office in May 1967 and died on 3 May 1969, which gave him the shortest tenure of any President of India and made him the first to die in office.

He held the office of Vice-President from 13 May 1952 to 12 May 1962, two full terms, and then served as the second President of India from 1962 to 1967.

He was sworn in on 26 January 1950, the day the Constitution came into force, and held the office until 13 May 1962.

He was crowned at the Raigad fort in 1674 with the title Chhatrapati, the ceremony being performed by the scholar Gaga Bhatt, and he governed with a council of eight ministers, the Ashta Pradhan, whose head carried the title Peshwa.

Krishnadevaraya of the Tuluva dynasty was himself the author of the Telugu work Amuktamalyada and patronised the Ashtadiggajas, the eight great poets of his court, which earned him the names Andhra Bhoja and Abhinava Bhoja after the legendary king Bhoja of Dhar.

He sent an army to the north that reached the Ganga, and in memory of the campaign he took the title Gangaikonda Chola and built a new capital called Gangaikondacholapuram; his naval expedition against the Srivijaya kingdom earned him Kadaram Kondan.

On his accession in 1658 he took the title Alamgir, conqueror of the world, and because he lived austerely and copied the Quran he was also called Zinda Pir, the living saint.

She was the daughter of Mirza Ghiyas Beg, whom Jahangir honoured with the title Itmad-ud-Daula, and after her marriage to the emperor in 1611 she was styled Nur Mahal, light of the palace, and then Nur Jahan, light of the world; coins were struck in her name along with the…

The ambition announced by the title matched his record: the conquest of Gujarat, Ranthambore, Chittor, Malwa and the Deccan campaigns of Malik Kafur, besides the market control regulations and the first systematic measurement of land for revenue.

Ruling from 1266 to 1287 over a sultanate weakened by factions, he raised the throne above the nobility by claiming Zil-i-Ilahi and Niabat-i-Khudai, deputy of God, and by making courtiers perform sijda, prostration, and paibos, kissing the feet.

The founder of the Slave or Mamluk dynasty was called Lakh Baksh for his lavish charity, and he began the Qutb Minar at Delhi and the Adhai Din ka Jhonpra at Ajmer.

He conquered the territories of the Western Kshatrapas in Gujarat and Malwa, which gave the Guptas access to the western ports, and he used the titles Vikramaditya, Simhavikrama and Devashri; the Chinese pilgrim Fa-hien visited India in his reign.

The Nasik cave inscription issued by his mother Gautami Balashri praises the Satavahana ruler as Trisamudratoyapitavahana and as Ekabrahmana, and credits him with destroying the Shakas, Yavanas and Pahlavas.

The Allahabad pillar inscription, a prashasti composed by his court poet Harisena, lists his campaigns in the Ganga valley, the Deccan and the frontier states and calls him Sarvarajochchetta; the same inscription gives him Kaviraja for his learning, and his coins show him playing the veena.

Ashoka edicts almost never use his personal name; they speak of Devanampiya Piyadassi, the beloved of the gods and of pleasing appearance.

The profit volume ratio measures contribution as a percentage of sales, and contribution is sales minus variable cost.

Costs are classified as direct or indirect by traceability. A direct cost can be attributed wholly to one product, job or process, such as the raw material in a shirt or the wages of the worker who stitches it.

Returns to scale asks what happens to output when every input is increased in the same proportion, which is possible only in the long run, when the firm can build a bigger plant as well as hire more labour.