UPSC GK Questions 2026

The Office of the Principal Scientific Adviser to the Government of India was created in 1999 and Dr A. P. J. Abdul Kalam was its first holder, before he became President of India in 2002.

National Technology Day marks 11 May 1998, the day of the first of the Pokhran-II nuclear tests, on which day India also test-flew the Trishul missile and completed the first flight of the indigenous Hansa-3 aircraft.

The board was constituted in 1996 as a statutory body under that Act and works under the Department of Science and Technology, providing loans and equity to Indian companies that take home-grown technology to the market.

INSPIRE stands for Innovation in Science Pursuit for Inspired Research and was launched by the Department of Science and Technology in 2008 to draw young people to science.

The body was founded in 1911 as the Indian Research Fund Association to sponsor and coordinate medical research in the country, and it was renamed the Indian Council of Medical Research in 1949 after independence.

The Department of Space, created in 1972, and the Department of Atomic Energy, created in 1954, are not placed under the Ministry of Science and Technology; both report directly to the Prime Minister, which is why ISRO and the atomic energy establishment are described as working under the Prime Minister's…

The Department of Science and Technology was created in 1971 as the nodal department for the promotion of new areas of science and technology and for the coordination of scientific work across ministries; it now runs the INSPIRE programme, the fellowships and the Vigyan Dhara scheme.

The Science and Engineering Research Board Act was passed in 2008 and the board was constituted as a statutory body under the Department of Science and Technology to fund basic research in the sciences and engineering through competitive grants to individual scientists.

The Anusandhan National Research Foundation Act was passed by Parliament in 2023 to create a single apex body for funding research across the sciences, including in state universities and colleges, which earlier received very little central research money.

CSIR was set up in 1942 and is registered as a society under the Societies Registration Act of 1860, and by its rules the Prime Minister holds the office of President of the society by virtue of the post.

It was the first policy statement on science adopted by independent India, placed before Parliament during the prime ministership of Jawaharlal Nehru and shaped in large part by Homi Bhabha.

The Dr Salim Ali Bird Sanctuary lies on Chorao island in the Mandovi river near Panaji and is a stretch of mangrove forest and mudflat known for its herons, egrets, kingfishers and migratory waterbirds; it is named after the ornithologist Salim Ali, the author of the standard handbooks on Indian…

Goa covers about 3,702 square kilometres, less than any other state of the Union; in population too it is among the smallest, ahead only of Arunachal Pradesh, Mizoram and Sikkim at the census of 2011.

Mormugao harbour, a natural harbour on the Goan coast, stands at the mouth of the Zuari, the largest river of the state, with the town of Vasco da Gama beside it; the port was developed for the export of iron ore brought down by barge.

Goa has a single house, the Legislative Assembly, of forty seats, which is the floor the Constitution allows for a state assembly through the special provision made for Goa; the state also sends two members to the Lok Sabha, from North Goa and South Goa, and one to the Rajya…

In 1510 Albuquerque took Goa from the Adil Shahi rulers of Bijapur, and the city became the seat of Portuguese power in the East, the capital of the Estado da India, which it remained until 1961.

The Basilica of Bom Jesus, built at the end of the sixteenth century, holds the body of St Francis Xavier in a silver casket, and the relics are brought out for public veneration at an exposition held about once in ten years; his feast falls on 3 December.

The correct answer is C, the Seventy-first Amendment Act, passed in 1992, which added Konkani, Manipuri and Nepali to the Eighth Schedule, taking the number of scheduled languages from fifteen to eighteen.

The Dudhsagar Falls, a drop of roughly 310 metres in four tiers, are on the Mandovi river in the Western Ghats near the Goa and Karnataka border, inside the Bhagwan Mahavir Wildlife Sanctuary; the name means sea of milk, from the white sheet the water makes in the monsoon.

It is the single national park of Goa and lies within the Bhagwan Mahavir Wildlife Sanctuary on the border with Karnataka, in the belt of the Western Ghats where the Dudhsagar Falls also stand.