UPSC GK Questions 2026

Panaji, also called Panjim, stands on the left bank of the Mandovi, known in Goa as the Mhadei, near the point where the river meets the Arabian Sea; Old Goa lies a short way upstream on the same river.

Indian air, land and naval forces moved into Goa, Daman and Diu from 17 to 19 December 1961 in Operation Vijay, and 19 December is observed as Goa Liberation Day.

On that day the Goa, Daman and Diu Reorganisation Act of 1987 came into force, Goa became the twenty-fifth state of the Union, and Daman and Diu continued as a separate union territory; 30 May is kept as Goa Statehood Day.

In a closed loop system a sensor measures what the process is actually doing, that measurement is compared with the desired value, and the controller acts on the difference, which is what a thermostat, a cruise control or a water level controller does.

SVAMITVA, launched in 2020 by the Ministry of Panchayati Raj, flies drones over the abadi or inhabited area of villages to make accurate maps, from which residents are given property cards that record their ownership and can be used to raise loans.

A SCADA system gathers readings from sensors and controllers spread over a plant, a grid or a water network, shows them on screens in a control room, records them, and lets an operator send commands back, which is why it is described as supervisory control together with data acquisition.

A PLC is a rugged industrial computer that reads the state of switches and sensors as inputs, runs a stored programme of logic, and switches motors, valves and lamps as outputs, so that a machine or a whole line runs by itself.

Vyommitra has a head, a face, arms and a torso but no legs, which is why it is called half humanoid, and it has been built to ride an uncrewed flight of the Gaganyaan human spaceflight programme, operate switches, watch the panels and report conditions as a crew member would.

Lakshya was developed by the Aeronautical Development Establishment of the DRDO to be flown as a target so that gun crews and missile units can practise against a realistic moving aircraft, and it is recovered by parachute.

A UAV is an aircraft with no pilot on board, flown either by a remote pilot or by its own programme, and when it is counted together with its ground control station and the radio link between them the whole is called an unmanned aircraft system.

Digital Sky is the online platform of the Directorate General of Civil Aviation on which a drone is registered and given its unique identification number, on which the airspace map with its green, yellow and red zones is published, and through which flight permissions are sought.

The rules class drones by all up weight, which includes the battery and the payload, and the nano class is the smallest, up to 250 grams, which is why the lightest toy and camera drones fall in it and are treated most lightly by the law.

Asimov set out the three laws in his science fiction, by which a robot may not harm a human being, must obey the orders given by human beings except where that conflicts with the first law, and must protect itself except where that conflicts with the first two laws; he…

The Czech writer Karel Capek used the word in his play R.U.R., or Rossum's Universal Robots, written in 1920, taking it from the Czech word robota, which means forced labour.

Automation is the technology in which mechanical parts, electronics and computer based control are put together so that a process is controlled and operated with little human help, which is exactly the description in the question.

It is the broad low break in the Western Ghats, about thirty kilometres wide, through which road and rail run between Kerala and Tamil Nadu and through which the summer winds blow inland, which is why the rainfall pattern on either side of it differs.

The great hornbill, a large forest bird of the Western Ghats with a heavy yellow bill and a casque above it, is the state bird of Kerala, and the state animal is the Indian elephant, the state flower the golden shower called kanikonna and the state tree the coconut palm.

Kerala grows most of the natural rubber produced in India, with the Kottayam region at its centre, and the Rubber Board of India works from Kottayam.

Vasco da Gama reached Kappad on the Malabar coast in 1498, having sailed round the Cape of Good Hope, and was received by the Zamorin, the ruler of Calicut; this was the first sea route opened from Europe to India.

The Kerala High Court sits at Ernakulam and its jurisdiction covers both the state of Kerala and the union territory of Lakshadweep, which has no high court of its own.