UPSC GK Questions 2026

The mongoose is a protected animal under the Wild Life (Protection) Act, yet its hair was being used to make artists brushes, and Operation Clean Art was the Bureau first country-wide operation directed at a single wildlife article, ending with large seizures of brushes and raw hair.

Zygogramma bicolorata is a leaf-feeding beetle from Mexico, the native region of Parthenium hysterophorus, and it was introduced in India as a biological control agent because its grubs and adults strip the weed of leaves and check its seed production.

Parthenium hysterophorus reached India from tropical America, reportedly with imported wheat, and spread rapidly over waste ground, roadsides and fallow fields.

The Wildlife Crime Control Bureau is a multi-disciplinary statutory body created in 2007 under section 38Z of the Wild Life (Protection) Act, 1972.

CITES sorts species into appendices according to how badly trade threatens them.

The text of CITES was agreed by the representatives of eighty countries meeting at Washington in the United States in 1973, which is why the treaty is also called the Washington Convention; it then entered into force on 1 July 1975, and India became a party in 1976.

It is a free-floating plant of South American origin that was brought to India for its attractive flowers.

Article 343(2) allowed English for only fifteen years, to 25 January 1965, and Article 343(3) left it to Parliament to continue it by law.

Article 371J, inserted by the Ninety-eighth Amendment Act, 2012, provides a separate development board for this backward region, with reservation in education and in state government posts for people domiciled there, and it is the latest addition to the 371 series.

It was inserted by the Thirteenth Amendment Act, 1962, when Nagaland was created as a state, and it protects Naga customary law and procedure, the ownership and transfer of land and its resources, and gives the Governor a special responsibility for law and order in the state.

Article 351 is a directive to the Union to promote the spread of the Hindi language and to develop it so that it may serve as a medium of expression for all the elements of the composite culture of India.

Article 348(2) allows the Governor of a state, with the previous consent of the President, to authorise the use of Hindi or of any other language used for the official purposes of the state in the proceedings of the High Court having its principal seat in that state.

Article 344(4) provides for this committee to examine the recommendations of the Official Language Commission constituted under Article 344(1) and to report its opinion to the President.

Both were inserted by the Seventh Amendment Act, 1956, which carried out the reorganisation of states on the recommendation of the States Reorganisation Commission.

It added Bodo, Dogri, Maithili and Santhali and brought the Eighth Schedule to twenty-two languages, where it still stands.

Sindhi was the first language added to the Eighth Schedule after the Constitution came into force, taking the list from the original fourteen languages to fifteen.

Part XVII is titled Official Language and runs from Article 343 to Article 351, in four chapters: the language of the Union, regional languages, the language of the Supreme Court and the High Courts, and special directives.

Article 343 opens Part XVII of the Constitution and provides in clause (1) that the official language of the Union shall be Hindi in the Devanagari script, with the international form of Indian numerals for official purposes.

He is credited with the Samaranganasutradhara on architecture and mechanics and the Saraswatikanthabharana on poetics, and with the Bhojashala at Dhar and the great lake and Shiva temple at Bhojpur.

The Chandelas ruled Jejakabhukti, the Bundelkhand region, from Khajuraho and Mahoba, and built the Khajuraho group of temples in the Nagara style between about 950 and 1050; the Lakshmana temple belongs to Yasovarman, the Vishvanatha temple to Dhanga and the great Kandariya Mahadeva temple to Vidyadhara.