UPSC GK Questions 2026

The mission was launched in January 2010 as one of the eight national missions under the National Action Plan on Climate Change, and its aim was to make solar power competitive by building capacity in stages and by supporting domestic manufacturing.

The alliance has its secretariat on the campus of the National Institute of Solar Energy at Gwal Pahari in Gurugram, and because it rests on a framework agreement among its members it is the first treaty-based international organisation to be headquartered in India.

A geothermal plant takes steam or hot water from a natural underground reservoir, whose temperature is set by the rock and rarely approaches what a furnace can produce, so both the temperature and the pressure at the turbine are well below those of a coal-fired steam plant, and the thermal…

Anthracite is the oldest and hardest grade of coal, with the highest proportion of carbon, so it gives the most heat for its weight and burns with a clean, almost smokeless flame.

The Governor appoints as Advocate General a person qualified to be appointed a judge of a High Court; the Advocate General advises the State Government on legal matters, holds office during the pleasure of the Governor, and receives such remuneration as the Governor determines.

It allows the Governor to promulgate an Ordinance when the State legislature, or either House where there are two, is not in session and he is satisfied that circumstances exist which make immediate action necessary.

The proviso to Article 164(1) requires these States to have a Minister in charge of tribal welfare, who may also be in charge of the welfare of the Scheduled Castes and backward classes or any other work.

It inserted Article 164(1A), under which the total number of Ministers in a State, including the Chief Minister, shall not exceed fifteen per cent of the total number of members of the Legislative Assembly, subject to a floor of twelve Ministers.

Article 161 gives the Governor power to grant pardons, reprieves, respites and remissions of punishment, and to suspend, remit or commute a sentence, in cases relating to matters to which the executive power of the State extends.

Article 159 says the oath of office is administered by the Chief Justice of the High Court exercising jurisdiction in relation to the State, and in his absence by the senior-most judge of that Court available.

Article 157 lays down only two qualifications for the office: the person must be a citizen of India and must have completed thirty-five years of age.

It provides that the Governor of a State shall be appointed by the President by warrant under his hand and seal.

A bicameral State legislature has a Legislative Assembly and a Legislative Council, and Andhra Pradesh, Telangana, Bihar and Uttar Pradesh each have both Houses.

Article 168 says a State legislature consists of the Governor and either one House or two Houses. Where there are two, the upper House is the Legislative Council or Vidhan Parishad, and Karnataka is one of the few States that has kept it.

Basavanna was a minister in the Kalachuri court in twelfth-century Karnataka and led the Virashaiva or Lingayat movement, whose followers wore the linga on their body, rejected temple ritual, Brahmanical authority and caste, and composed short prose-poems called vachanas in Kannada; Akka Mahadevi and Allama Prabhu belong to the same…

Khwaja Moinuddin Chishti, remembered as Gharib Nawaz or helper of the poor, brought the Chishti order to India towards the end of the twelfth century and settled at Ajmer in Rajasthan, where his tomb became one of the most visited shrines in the subcontinent for Hindus and Muslims alike.

Established in India at Multan by Shaikh Bahauddin Zakariya, it held that a mystic could accept land, wealth and office from the state and still lead a spiritual life, and its shaikhs worked closely with the Sultans of Delhi.

Tulsidas retold the story of Rama in the Awadhi speech of eastern Uttar Pradesh, which put the epic within reach of people who could not read Sanskrit and made the Ramcharitmanas the most widely recited devotional work of north India.

Writing in the eighth century, he argued that Brahman alone is real, that the individual soul is not different from Brahman, and that the world as ordinarily perceived is the work of maya; this is Advaita, non-dualism.

The Alvars were the twelve Vaishnava saint-poets of the Tamil country, active roughly between the sixth and the ninth centuries, whose hymns were later gathered as the Divya Prabandham and sung in temples.