UPSC GK Questions 2026

In zero based budgeting every item of expenditure starts from a zero base and has to be justified afresh for the coming period, instead of being carried over because it existed last year.

Opium is the dried latex of the opium poppy, whose botanical name is Papaver somniferum; the second word means sleep bringing.

The Blue Revolution means the rapid rise in fish production, so it belongs to pisciculture, the rearing of fish. In India it began with the Fish Farmers Development Agency set up in the early 1970s, and Dr Hiralal Chaudhuri, who worked out induced breeding in carp, is called its father.

Chanda Pradyota ruled Avanti, the mahajanapada of western and central India whose capital was Ujjayini, the modern Ujjain in Madhya Pradesh.

Vyommitra is a half-humanoid robot built by the Indian Space Research Organisation and shown to the public in January 2020.

The New Industrial Policy of 24 July 1991 abolished industrial licensing for all but a short list of industries, so a firm no longer needed a government permit to start production, to expand or to import.

Acharya Vinoba Bhave won the Ramon Magsaysay Award in 1958, in the category of community leadership, and was the first Indian to receive it.

Article 13 declares that any law inconsistent with or in derogation of the fundamental rights is void, and it binds both the laws made before the Constitution and those made after it.

The Preamble describes India as a sovereign, socialist, secular, democratic republic; the word federal appears nowhere in it, or indeed anywhere in the Constitution.

The Chipko movement began in 1973 in the Garhwal Himalayas, in Chamoli district of what is now Uttarakhand, when villagers hugged trees to stop contractors from felling them.

Article 149 says the Comptroller and Auditor General shall perform such duties and exercise such powers as Parliament may by law prescribe.

Article 280 requires the President to constitute a Finance Commission every fifth year, or earlier if needed, with a chairman and four other members.

The Diwan-i-insha was the department of royal correspondence in the Delhi Sultanate.

Article 131 of the Constitution gives the Supreme Court exclusive original jurisdiction in disputes between the Government of India and one or more states, and in disputes among states themselves.

Balban, who ruled from 1266 to 1287, brought the Persian court customs of sijda, bowing low before the Sultan, and paibos, kissing his feet, into the Delhi court.

He founded the Swadesh Bandhab Samiti at Barisal in 1905, during the movement against the partition of Bengal.

The Salary and Allowances of Leaders of Opposition in Parliament Act, 1977 gave the post statutory recognition for the first time and fixed the pay and perks of the Leader of the Opposition in the Lok Sabha and the Rajya Sabha.

Qutb-ud-din Aibak began the Quwwat-ul-Islam mosque in 1192, soon after the second battle of Tarain, and the first phase was finished by about 1198, which falls in the last decade of the twelfth century.

Champa was the capital of the Anga mahajanapada, and its site lies near modern Bhagalpur in Bihar, where the Champa river meets the Ganga.

Participants at the programme were sensitised about the use of eco-friendly clay idols and were advised to avoid immersing idols made of Plaster of Paris, or carrying harmful chemical colours, in drinking water tanks.