UPSC GK Questions 2026

He founded the Physical Research Laboratory at Ahmedabad in 1947, convinced the government to set up the Indian National Committee for Space Research in 1962, picked Thumba near the magnetic equator for the first sounding rocket launch in November 1963, and led the organisation that became the Indian Space Research…

C. V. Raman announced on 28 February 1928 that when a beam of light passes through a transparent medium a small fraction of it is scattered with a shifted wavelength, which carries information about the molecules of the medium; the Government of India fixed National Science Day on that anniversary…

Chandrasekhara Venkata Raman received the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1930 for his work on the scattering of light and for the effect named after him, which he had demonstrated on 28 February 1928; he was the first Asian and the first person from a non-white country to win a…

Yuksom, in the west of the state, is where three Tibetan lamas consecrated Phuntsog Namgyal as the first Chogyal in 1642, founding the dynasty that ruled until 1975; the name means the meeting place of three learned ones, and the Norbugang throne and the nearby Dubdi monastery mark the spot.

The state began phasing out chemical fertilisers and pesticides in the mid two thousands, converted its whole cultivated area to certified organic management, and was declared India first fully organic state in 2016; the policy won a Future Policy Gold Award from the Food and Agriculture Organization and the World…

At 8,586 metres it stands on the border of Sikkim and Nepal, is the highest peak in India and the third highest in the world after Everest and K2, and is worshipped as a guardian deity in Sikkim, which is why climbers stop short of the actual summit.

Sikkim had been a kingdom under the Chogyals of the Namgyal dynasty, with India responsible for its defence and external affairs; the thirty-fifth amendment of 1974 made it an associate state, and after a referendum in April 1975 the thirty-sixth amendment made it the twenty-second state of India with effect…

Kokborok, whose name means the language of the people, is spoken by the Tripuri and related communities and is an official language of the state along with Bengali and English; it belongs to the Tibeto-Burman family, unlike Bengali, which is Indo-Aryan, and the two sit side by side in the…

Unakoti is a hillside near Kailashahar in the north of the state covered with huge rock-cut images of Shiva, Ganesha, Nandi and others, carved into the rock face and dated to roughly the seventh to ninth centuries; the name comes from the legend that Shiva passed the night here with…

Neermahal stands in the middle of Rudrasagar Lake at Melaghar, about fifty kilometres from Agartala, and was built in the nineteen thirties by Maharaja Bir Bikram Kishore Manikya as a summer palace; it mixes Hindu and Mughal elements with Islamic arches and is described as the only water palace in…

Agartala lies close to the Bangladesh border in the west of the state and holds the Ujjayanta Palace, built by Maharaja Radha Kishore Manikya at the turn of the twentieth century and now the state museum; it is the second largest city of the north-east after Guwahati.

The Hornbill Festival runs from the first to the tenth of December at the Naga Heritage Village at Kisama, a short distance from Kohima, and brings all the major tribes of the state together to present their dances, songs, crafts, food and games; it is called the festival of festivals…

Article 371A, inserted by the thirteenth amendment when the state was created, lays down that no Act of Parliament about Naga religious or social practices, Naga customary law and procedure, the administration of civil and criminal justice where decisions follow Naga customary law, or the ownership and transfer of land…

Nagaland was created under the State of Nagaland Act 1962 out of the Naga Hills-Tuensang Area and became the sixteenth state of India on that day, the first of the north-eastern states to be formed after independence and well before the general reorganisation of the region.

Kohima stands in the hills of the Angami country and has been the seat of government since before statehood; the Kohima War Cemetery recalls the battle fought here in 1944, and the Hornbill Festival is held each December at Kisama, a short distance away.

Article 371G, inserted when the state was created in 1986, provides that no Act of Parliament about the religious or social practices of the Mizos, Mizo customary law and procedure, the administration of civil and criminal justice involving decisions according to Mizo customary law, or the ownership and transfer of…

In the Cheraw, pairs of men sit facing each other and tap long bamboo staves together in rhythm while dancers step in and out of the closing bamboos; it is performed above all at Chapchar Kut, the spring festival held when the cleared jhum fields are waiting to be burnt…

The Front had grown out of the famine relief committee formed during the Mautam of the nineteen fifties and had been in armed revolt since 1966 under Laldenga; the accord signed on 30 June 1986 ended the insurgency, gave the territory statehood and brought Laldenga into office as chief minister…

Mizoram became the twenty-third state of India on that day under the fifty-third amendment of the Constitution, and Arunachal Pradesh became the twenty-fourth state on the same date.

Wangala is the post-harvest festival of the Garo people of the western hills of Meghalaya, held in autumn in thanksgiving to Misi Saljong, the giver of the harvest, and it takes its popular name from the long drums played in rows; the Khasis of the same state hold Nongkrem and…