UPSC GK Questions 2026

A tanka is a covered underground cistern, usually circular, dug in the courtyard of a house or in a public square in western Rajasthan, into which rain from the roof or a paved catchment is led and stored for drinking through the dry months.

Both lie in the Mehrauli area of Delhi; Gandhak ki Baoli, from the time of Iltutmish, takes its name from the sulphurous smell of its water, and Rajon ki Baoli belongs to the Lodi period and is named after the masons who once used it.

Adalaj ni Vav stands at Adalaj in Gandhinagar district and was completed in 1499 during the reign of Mahmud Begada; its carving mixes Hindu motifs with Islamic geometric and floral work, and the queen Rudabai is remembered in its story.

The Kallanai, known in English as the Grand Anicut, is a dam of unhewn stone laid across the Kaveri in the Thanjavur region and is credited to the early Chola king Karikala; it still spreads the river water over the delta.

Dholavira, on Khadir island in the Rann of Kutch, had no perennial river, so its builders dammed the Manhar and Mansar streams and cut a series of large reservoirs inside the walled town, the most advanced water engineering known from the Harappan civilisation.

In Karnataka and the Deccan the stepped tank built beside a temple for ritual bathing is called a kalyani or a pushkarni, and the stepped tank at Hampi, built of fitted stone blocks, is the best known example.

Chand Baori is at Abhaneri in Dausa district of Rajasthan, opposite the Harshat Mata temple, and is attributed to King Chanda of the Nikumbha house in about the ninth century; its criss-cross flights descending thirteen storeys make it one of the deepest stepwells in India.

The reverse of the one hundred rupee note of the Mahatma Gandhi new series carries the motif of Rani ki Vav at Patan, chosen because it is a World Heritage Site that stands for Indian water architecture.

Queen Udayamati had the stepwell built in the eleventh century in memory of her husband Bhimdev I of the Solanki or Chaulukya dynasty of Gujarat, which is why it is described as a memorial in the form of an inverted temple.

Rani ki Vav stands on the bank of the Saraswati at Patan, the old Solanki capital called Anhilwad Patan, and was inscribed as a World Heritage Site in 2014 for its seven storeys of sculpture in the Maru-Gurjara style.

Section 51 of the Act prescribes this enhanced punishment, along with a fine, for offences against animals given the highest protection, and the amendment of 2022 raised the monetary penalties further.

Article 252 allows Parliament to legislate on a State subject for two or more States when the legislatures of those States pass resolutions asking it to do so, and the law then applies to those States and to any other State that adopts it later.

The peacock is the national bird of India and was placed in Schedule I, the group given the highest protection, so it could never be treated as vermin.

The amendment of 1991 inserted Chapter IVA into the Act and created the Central Zoo Authority, which lays down standards for housing and upkeep of animals, recognises or derecognises zoos and regulates the exchange of animals between them.

That amendment inserted Section 36A for conservation reserves, usually declared on government land next to a national park or sanctuary, and Section 36C for community reserves, declared on private or community land where people volunteer to protect wildlife.

The National Board for Wild Life was created by the amendment of 2002 under Section 5A of the Act as the apex advisory body on wildlife, and the Prime Minister chairs it.

Section 35 empowers the State Government to declare an area of adequate ecological or zoological importance as a national park, where no grazing is permitted and no rights of any person are allowed to continue.

In the restructured Act the plant schedule moved from the old Schedule VI to the new Schedule III, and it still protects a short list of species such as the blue vanda, the pitcher plant and other threatened orchids and cycads, whose uprooting and trade are controlled.

The amendment of 2022 rationalised the schedules of the parent Act: Schedule I now lists animals given the highest protection, Schedule II lists animals with a lesser degree of protection, Schedule III lists specified plants and Schedule IV lists specimens figuring in the appendices of the Convention on International Trade…

The Wild Life (Protection) Act received the assent of the President on 9 September 1972 and remains the principal wildlife law of the country, covering hunting, protected areas, trade in animal articles and the schedules of protected species.