UPSC GK Questions 2026

The American architect designed the Ahmedabad campus with massive exposed brick walls, circular openings and shaded courts that suit the climate of Gujarat, and B. V. Doshi worked closely with him on the project.

In that year the Capitol Complex at Chandigarh was inscribed as one of the sites making up the transnational property called the Architectural Work of Le Corbusier, spread across several countries, which recognises his contribution to the modern movement.

Wittet designed the Gateway of India in the Indo-Saracenic style, with a great arch and Gujarati decorative detail, and he also designed the museum in Mumbai now known as the Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Vastu Sangrahalaya.

Baker, born in Britain and later an Indian citizen, settled in Kerala and built houses, hospitals and institutions there using exposed local brick, filler slabs and perforated jaali walls that reduced cost and kept interiors cool without machinery.

Correa built the Jawahar Kala Kendra in Jaipur on a plan drawn from the nine squares of the traditional mandala, and the Kanchanjunga Apartments in Mumbai as a tower of interlocking flats with deep terraces for shade; he also designed Bharat Bhavan in Bhopal and the Gandhi Smarak Sangrahalaya at…

The Iranian-Canadian architect designed the temple, completed in 1986, as a flower of twenty-seven marble petals arranged in groups of three, surrounded by nine pools, and it has become one of the most visited buildings in the country.

Baker designed the circular Council House, later the Sansad Bhavan, which was completed in 1927 and which housed Parliament for almost a century.

Lutyens designed the Viceroy House on Raisina Hill, the building that became the Rashtrapati Bhavan after independence, and he also designed the memorial arch now known as India Gate.

Doshi received the Pritzker Architecture Prize in 2018, the first Indian to do so, for a career that began as an assistant to Le Corbusier and produced CEPT University and Sangath in Ahmedabad, the campus of IIM Bangalore and the Aranya low-cost housing at Indore; he was given the Royal…

The Swiss-French architect gave Chandigarh its grid of self-contained sectors and designed the Capitol Complex with the Secretariat, the High Court, the Legislative Assembly and the Open Hand monument; the first scheme had been drawn by Albert Mayer with Matthew Nowicki before the work passed to him.

A Constitution Bench struck down the electoral bond scheme in February 2024 in the petitions led by the Association for Democratic Reforms, holding that anonymous corporate funding of parties violates the voter's right to information under Article 19(1)(a) and that the amendments permitting unlimited company donations were arbitrary; the Court…

Section 34 of the Representation of the People Act, 1951 fixes the security deposit for a Lok Sabha candidate at twenty-five thousand rupees, and a candidate belonging to a Scheduled Caste or a Scheduled Tribe pays half of it; the deposit is forfeited if the candidate does not poll more…

The Election Commission of India was constituted on 25 January 1950, a day before the Constitution came into force, and the day has been observed as National Voters' Day since 2011 to enrol young citizens who turn eighteen and to hand them the elector photo identity card.

The machine was used for the first time in 1982 at the Paravur assembly constituency in Kerala, in a by-election and only in a part of the polling stations; the experiment was challenged for want of a statutory basis, Parliament then amended the law in 1989 to permit the machine…

This committee reported in 1998 on state funding of elections and recommended that funding be partial, be given in kind rather than as cash, and be confined to recognised national and state parties, with the caution that the state of public finances allowed only a limited beginning.

In this judgment of 2013 the Supreme Court held that the right to reject every candidate is part of the freedom of expression and of the secrecy of the ballot, and it directed the Election Commission to provide a None of the Above button; the Commission used it from the…

The Election Symbols (Reservation and Allotment) Order, 1968 was issued by the Election Commission under Article 324 and the Conduct of Elections Rules, and it governs the recognition of national and state parties, the reservation of symbols for them, the list of free symbols for other candidates, and disputes between…

Section 29A of the Representation of the People Act, 1951 is the provision under which an association or body of individual citizens applies to the Election Commission for registration as a political party, and the application must carry a specific undertaking of true faith and allegiance to the Constitution, to…

The Tenth Schedule was added by the Fifty-second Amendment in 1985 and it disqualifies a member of Parliament or of a state legislature who voluntarily gives up the membership of the party on whose ticket the seat was won, or who votes or abstains against the party direction; the Speaker…

The Constitution (Sixty-first Amendment) Act, 1988 amended Article 326 and lowered the qualifying age for a voter from twenty-one to eighteen years, and it took effect in March 1989, so the general election of 1989 was the first in which eighteen-year-olds voted.