UPSC GK Questions 2026

The Kiratarjuniya, a Sanskrit epic poem of the sixth century, was written by Bharavi. The Kiratarjuniya tells, in 18 cantos, a story from the Vana Parva of the Mahabharata: Arjuna performs penance to win divine weapons, and Shiva tests him by appearing as a Kirata, a mountain hunter.

A famine is marked by widespread deaths from starvation and from epidemics, which spread through contaminated water, rotting food and bodies weakened by hunger.

Population ageing is the process by which the share of older people becomes proportionately larger, not lesser, so statement 1 is false, while statement 2 is true.

A hygrometer measures humidity, that is, the amount of water vapour or moisture in the air. The name comes from the Greek "hygros", meaning wet.

Moving from north to south across Jammu and Kashmir and Ladakh, these ranges appear in exactly this order. The Karakoram, the northernmost, holds K2 (Godwin Austen), India's highest peak, and large glaciers such as the Siachen.

Karaikkal Ammaiyar was a Nayanar, one of the Tamil saints devoted to Shiva, so this statement is not correct. The early Bhakti movement of Tamil Nadu, from about the sixth century, was led by two groups of poet-saints: the Alvars, devotees of Vishnu, and the Nayanars, devotees of Shiva.

NW-1 is on the Ganga, NW-10 on the Amba river in Maharashtra and NW-100 on the Tapi, so all three pairs are correctly matched.

Organic farming relies heavily on crop rotation, not on as little of it as possible, so this is the statement that is not correct.

Article 371 and its sub-articles make special provisions for several States, but Madhya Pradesh is not one of them.

Under Article 243G, it is the Legislature of a State, not Parliament, that may by law give Panchayats powers to prepare plans and to carry out schemes for economic development and social justice.

Neap tides come when the Sun and the Moon pull at right angles to each other, so the Sun's pull partly cancels the Moon's; but two neap tides are about two weeks apart, not seven days.

The green pigment of leaves is chlorophyll, and a magnesium atom sits at the centre of every chlorophyll molecule.

All 30 members of the Estimates Committee are elected by the Lok Sabha from among its own members; the Rajya Sabha has no place on it.

Honshu is the largest of Japan's islands, the main island on which Tokyo, Osaka, Kyoto and Mount Fuji are found.

The Mahanavami dibba stands on one of the highest points of Vijayanagara (Hampi), but the Virupaksha temple is not on it; the temple stands in the sacred centre of the city near the Tungabhadra.

The Cayman Trench lies in the Caribbean Sea and the South Sandwich Trench in the South Atlantic, so neither of them is in the Pacific Ocean.

Madhyama-vyayoga is a one-act Sanskrit play by Bhasa, based on an episode from the Mahabharata. Bhasa is one of the earliest known Sanskrit dramatists, admired by Kalidasa himself.

Statements 2 and 3 are correct, while statement 1 confuses the Fifth Schedule with the Sixth. The tribal areas of Assam, Meghalaya, Tripura and Mizoram are governed under the Sixth Schedule (Articles 244(2) and 275(1)), which sets up autonomous district councils.

INS Astradharini is an Indian Navy ship built to launch torpedoes during trials and recover them afterwards. The vessel was commissioned at Visakhapatnam in 2015.

UPI moves money straight from one bank account to another through a phone, so there is no need to load money into a separate wallet first.