UPSC GK Questions 2026

The Nehru Trophy Boat Race has been rowed on Punnamada Lake at Alappuzha since 1952, when it was instituted after Jawaharlal Nehru watched a race there, and the boats used are the long snake boats called chundan vallam.

Sagol Kangjei is the Manipuri game played on ponies with a stick and a ball and is widely held to be the forerunner of modern polo, which British officers took up in Manipur and Cachar in the nineteenth century before it spread across the world; the Mapal Kangjeibung ground at…

Madhya Pradesh declared Mallakhamb its state game in 2013, and the question survives in paper after paper because the art itself is associated with Maharashtra, where it was revived in the nineteenth century as training for wrestlers.

Inbuan is the belt wrestling of Mizoram, in which a wrestler grips a belt worn round the waist of the opponent and must lift him off the ground; kicking is not allowed and the knee may not be bent, and stepping outside the circle loses the bout.

Mardani Khel is the Maratha art of armed combat from Maharashtra, and it is identified by the patta, a straight sword fixed to a gauntlet that covers the forearm, and by the vita, a corded javelin.

Thoda is the archery based contest of Himachal Pradesh, played around the Baisakhi season, in which two groups called the Pashi and the Saathi shoot blunt wooden arrows aimed below the knee of the opposing players, and dance and drumming accompany the contest.

Gatka is the Punjabi martial art fought with the soti, a wooden stick, and the farri, a shield, and it is displayed at Sikh festivals such as Hola Mohalla.

Thang-Ta is the armed component of the Manipuri martial system called Huyen Langlon, where thang means sword and ta means spear, while the unarmed component is called Sarit Sarak.

Silambam is the staff art of Tamil Nadu, and the length of bamboo, usually about the height of the practitioner, is what identifies it in any list of weapons.

Kalaripayattu belongs to Kerala, takes its name from the kalari, the arena in which it is taught, and is usually described as among the oldest surviving martial arts in the world.

He flew in 1984 aboard a Soviet mission under the Interkosmos programme and spent about a week in orbit, and his reply that India looked the best in the world from up there is often quoted.

Aditya-L1 was launched in 2023 and was placed in a halo orbit around the first Lagrange point between the Earth and the Sun, a position from which the Sun can be watched without eclipses, and it carries instruments to study the corona, the solar wind and solar flares.

The spacecraft was launched by a PSLV in November 2013 and entered the orbit of Mars on 24 September 2014, which made India the first country to succeed at Mars on its first attempt and the first in Asia to reach Mars orbit.

Chandrayaan-1 was launched in 2008, carried the Moon Impact Probe and instruments from several countries, and its data showed the presence of water molecules on the lunar surface, which changed the understanding of the Moon.

The correct answer is A, Sriharikota, an island on the coast of Andhra Pradesh, from which PSLV, GSLV and LVM3 flights take off.

The headquarters of ISRO and of the Department of Space are at Bengaluru, where the U R Rao Satellite Centre and the telemetry and tracking network ISTRAC are also located.

The SLV-3 placed it in orbit on 18 July 1980 from Sriharikota, with A. P. J. Abdul Kalam as the mission director, and the flight made India a country able to launch its own satellites.

It was launched on 19 April 1975 from a Soviet launch site, was named after the astronomer of the fifth century and carried experiments in astronomy and solar physics.

ISRO was formed on 15 August 1969, taking over the work of the committee that had been running the programme.

He chaired the Indian National Committee for Space Research set up in 1962, chose Thumba for the first sounding rocket launches and argued that a poor country needed space technology for communication, education and weather rather than for prestige.