UPSC GK Questions 2026

Mycoplasmas are the smallest living cells known, they lack a cell wall altogether, and because of that they can change shape and are not affected by antibiotics that act on the wall; they cause diseases in plants and animals and are placed in the kingdom Monera.

The wall of a fungal cell is built of chitin, a nitrogen-containing polysaccharide that is also found in the exoskeleton of insects, and it is one of the main reasons fungi were taken out of the plant kingdom and given a kingdom of their own.

A species is a group of organisms that resemble one another in all essential characters and that can interbreed to produce fertile offspring; it is the smallest and the basic unit of classification, and all higher ranks are built by grouping species together.

Chlamydomonas is a unicellular, flagellated member of the Chlorophyceae, the green algae, in which chlorophyll a and b give the plant its grass-green colour and the food is stored as starch.

Robert Harding Whittaker proposed the five kingdoms Monera, Protista, Fungi, Plantae and Animalia in 1969, using cell structure, body organisation, mode of nutrition, reproduction and evolutionary relationships as the criteria of division.

The Swedish naturalist Carl von Linne, known in Latin as Carolus Linnaeus, arranged plants and animals in a hierarchy of ranks and gave biology the two-word system of scientific names in his works Systema Naturae and Species Plantarum, so he is called the father of taxonomy.

Section 2(1)(d) of the Act defines human rights as rights relating to life, liberty, equality and dignity of the individual guaranteed by the Constitution or embodied in these covenants and enforceable by courts in India.

On a ground of proved misbehaviour or incapacity the President must refer the matter to the Supreme Court, and the Chairperson or member can be removed only if the Court, after an inquiry held in accordance with its own procedure, reports that the ground is made out.

The correct answer is C, 2014, when the Jain community was notified as a minority, joining Muslims, Christians, Sikhs, Buddhists and Parsis and taking the notified list to six communities.

The correct answer is C, 2005, the year of the Commissions for Protection of Child Rights Act, under which the national commission began work in 2007 and the State commissions were later set up.

The correct answer is C, the National Commission for Scheduled Castes, which stands on Article 338 of the Constitution; its companion bodies for Scheduled Tribes and for Backward Classes stand on Articles 338A and 338B, the last inserted by the One Hundred and Second Amendment in 2018.

Section 19 of the Protection of Human Rights Act, 1993 carves out a special procedure for the armed forces: the Commission may either not proceed with the complaint or seek a report from the Central Government, and after receiving that report it may make its recommendations; the Government must inform…

The Protection of Human Rights Act, 1993 bars the Commission from inquiring into any matter after the expiry of one year from the date on which the act constituting the violation of human rights is alleged to have been committed.

The selection committee has six members: the Prime Minister as its head, the Speaker of the Lok Sabha, the Deputy Chairman of the Rajya Sabha, the Leaders of the Opposition in the Lok Sabha and the Rajya Sabha, and the Union Home Minister; the President then makes the appointment on…

The correct answer is B, 12 October, the date on which the Commission was constituted in 1993.

The Act began life as an ordinance in September 1993, and the Commission was constituted on 12 October 1993 with Justice Ranganath Misra, a former Chief Justice of India, as its first Chairperson.

The Protection of Human Rights (Amendment) Act, 2019 reduced the term of the Chairperson and the members of the Commission from five years to three years, or until they attain the age of seventy, whichever is earlier, and it also made them eligible for reappointment.

A State Human Rights Commission is created by Chapter V of the Protection of Human Rights Act, 1993, an ordinary law of Parliament, so it is a statutory and not a constitutional body; Parliament could abolish it by amending that Act alone.

The correct answer is B, the Hartog Committee, which reported in 1929 that most children left school before becoming literate and that the hurried expansion of primary schools had produced wastage and stagnation; it recommended consolidation of existing schools rather than further expansion.

The correct answer is A, Maulana Abul Kalam Azad, who launched the Urdu weekly Al-Hilal and, when it was suppressed, followed it with Al-Balagh, using both to argue for Hindu-Muslim unity against the colonial government.