UPSC GK Questions 2026

Swachh Survekshan has been conducted since 2016 as part of Swachh Bharat Mission-Urban, and it ranks cities on waste collection and processing, public and community toilets and citizen feedback.

Launched on 25 June 2015 by the Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs, AMRUT funds water supply, sewerage and septage management, storm water drains, urban transport and green spaces in selected cities, and AMRUT 2.0 followed on 1 October 2021 with an emphasis on recycled water and the rejuvenation of…

The old rural housing scheme was restructured as PMAY-Gramin with effect from 20 November 2016, with beneficiaries now identified from the deprivation data of the Socio-Economic and Caste Census of 2011 and verified by the gram sabha instead of being chosen from the earlier below poverty line lists.

The urban half of the mission, including the construction of community and public toilets, solid waste management and the Swachh Survekshan ranking of cities, is with that ministry, and its second phase, SBM-Urban 2.0, was launched on 1 October 2021 for garbage free cities.

The mission is run by the Department of Drinking Water and Sanitation in that ministry, which was itself created in 2019 by merging the Ministry of Water Resources, River Development and Ganga Rejuvenation with drinking water and sanitation.

The mission promises a functional household tap connection giving at least 55 litres of potable water per person per day of prescribed quality, a norm raised from the earlier rural standard.

PMAY-Gramin raised the minimum unit size to 25 square metres, which must include a dedicated area for hygienic cooking, an increase over the 20 square metres allowed under the Indira Awaas Yojana.

PMAY was launched on 25 June 2015, on the same day as AMRUT and the Smart Cities Mission, with the aim of a pucca house for every eligible family.

The declaration was timed for the 150th birth anniversary of Mahatma Gandhi, exactly five years after the mission was launched, and the second phase then began with the goal of ODF Plus villages that sustain the status and manage solid and liquid waste.

The mission was launched on the 145th birth anniversary of Mahatma Gandhi, with the target of an open defecation free India by 2 October 2019, his 150th birth anniversary, and its logo is a pair of spectacles recalling him.

Manas in Assam, a World Heritage Site on the Bhutan border, was one of the nine reserves notified when Project Tiger began in 1973, along with Corbett, Kanha, Ranthambore, Bandipur, Melghat, Simlipal, Palamau and the Sundarbans.

Section 38V of that Act, inserted in 2006, requires the State government to notify a tiger reserve on the recommendation of the National Tiger Conservation Authority, with a core or critical tiger habitat to be kept inviolate and a buffer area in which coexistence is allowed, and to prepare a…

Periyar Tiger Reserve lies in the Idukki and Pathanamthitta districts of Kerala, around the Periyar reservoir created by the Mullaperiyar dam, and Kerala's other tiger reserve is Parambikulam.

Global Tiger Day, also called International Tiger Day, was adopted at the St Petersburg tiger summit of 2010, where the thirteen tiger range countries agreed on the goal of doubling wild tiger numbers.

The Alwar district reserve in Rajasthan was found in 2004 and 2005 to have no tigers left, the result of poaching and weak protection.

Buxa Tiger Reserve lies in the Alipurduar district of north Bengal in the Dooars, against the Bhutan border, and was notified in 1983.

Bor Tiger Reserve lies in the Wardha district of Maharashtra, near Nagpur, and is the smallest tiger reserve in the country; it is part of the central Indian landscape that also holds Tadoba-Andhari, Pench, Melghat and Navegaon-Nagzira.

Spread across the Nallamala hills in Andhra Pradesh and Telangana along the Krishna river, it is the largest tiger reserve in the country by area, and its division between two States after 2014 is itself a question.

It was notified in 1936 as Hailey National Park, the first national park in India, was later renamed after the hunter turned conservationist Jim Corbett, and was among the nine reserves with which Project Tiger started in 1973.

Acting on the report of the Tiger Task Force appointed after the loss of the tigers of Sariska, Parliament amended the Act of 1972 in 2006 to insert Chapter IV-B, which created the National Tiger Conservation Authority and also the Wildlife Crime Control Bureau.