UPSC GK Questions 2026

On the night of 2 and 3 December 1984 methyl isocyanate leaked from a pesticide plant at Bhopal and killed thousands of people in the surrounding settlements, and India keeps 2 December as National Pollution Control Day in memory of the victims and as a reminder of the need for…

The index is academic work, produced by the Yale Center for Environmental Law and Policy together with a centre at Columbia University, and it ranks countries on indicators of environmental health and ecosystem vitality.

Its central measure, the Living Planet Index, is prepared with the Zoological Society of London and shows how populations of mammals, birds, fish, reptiles and amphibians have changed over time.

The report compares the emission cuts that countries have actually promised with the cuts the world would need to hold warming to agreed limits, and the difference between the two is the gap of the title; UNEP releases it shortly before the annual climate conference.

It has brought out the report once in two years since 1987, assessing forest cover and tree cover state by state from satellite imagery.

The Convention on Wetlands was signed on 2 February 1971 in the Iranian city of Ramsar on the shore of the Caspian Sea, and it is the oldest of the modern global conservation treaties; the day has been observed on that anniversary since 1997.

The correct answer is B, the Montreal Protocol, which was signed on 16 September 1987 and commits countries to phasing out chlorofluorocarbons and other substances that destroy stratospheric ozone; the day is formally called the International Day for the Preservation of the Ozone Layer.

The United Nations General Assembly designated this date after the United Nations Conference on the Human Environment held at Stockholm in 1972, and the day has been observed since 1974, each year with a fresh theme and a host country, with the United Nations Environment Programme leading it.

SMART governance is the standard shorthand for the aim of administrative reform in India, and it expands to simple, moral, accountable, responsive and transparent government; e-governance is treated as the means by which each of these five qualities becomes possible, since an online process is simpler, leaves a record, can…

BharatNet lays optical fibre to the panchayat level so that village institutions, Common Services Centres, schools and health centres can get broadband, and it is the main project under the Broadband Highways pillar of Digital India.

The application was built by the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology with the National e-Governance Division so that a citizen can reach hundreds of central and state services, from provident fund enquiries to gas bookings, from a single app in several languages.

This is the model in which a service is delivered directly to an individual, such as an online caste or income certificate, a driving licence application or a pension payment, and it is the model most visible to the public.

The same corporation runs the RuPay card network, the BHIM application and the immediate payment service, so a question about any of these has the same answer.

It was set up in 2009 and was given statutory standing by the Aadhaar Act of 2016, and the first Aadhaar number was issued in 2010 at Tembhli village in the Nandurbar district of Maharashtra.

The nine pillars are Broadband Highways, Universal Access to Mobile Connectivity, the Public Internet Access Programme, e-Governance or reforming government through technology, e-Kranti for the electronic delivery of services, Information for All, Electronics Manufacturing, IT for Jobs, and Early Harvest Programmes.

The correct answer is B, the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology, shortened to MeitY, which is the nodal ministry for the programme and also for the National e-Governance Division, DigiLocker, UMANG and CERT-In.

Digital India was launched on that day with the tagline Power to Empower, and it is implemented by the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology; the launch week was observed as Digital India Week.

It is India’s first cyberlaw, and it is the statute that gave legal recognition to electronic records and to digital and electronic signatures, so that a contract concluded online is as enforceable as one written on paper and a department may accept a filing or issue a licence electronically.

The correct answer is B, Dara Shikoh, the eldest son of Shah Jahan, who was a scholar of comparative religion; besides having the Upanishads rendered into Persian as the Sirr-i-Akbar, or the greatest secret, he wrote the Majma-ul-Bahrain, the mingling of two oceans, on the common ground between Hindu and…

Aurangzeb ended official history writing after the first ten years of his reign, which the Alamgirnama of Mirza Muhammad Kazim had covered, so Khafi Khan wrote his history privately; his very name is understood to mean the one who wrote in secret.