UPSC GK Questions 2026

The Council was informed that Phase 1A had reached about eighty two per cent physical completion, and the Minister urged the implementing agencies to keep strict supervision so that this revised target is met.

The Minister told the Council that this many countries, among them Portugal, the United Arab Emirates, Vietnam, Thailand, the Netherlands, Denmark, Oman, Israel, Germany, the Republic of Korea, Italy, New Zealand and Singapore, had signed memoranda of understanding for collaboration on the project.

The release says the project reviewed by the Governing Council is coming up there, and that it seeks to revive and showcase a maritime legacy spanning over five millennia, with the aim of making the town a globally known centre of maritime heritage, knowledge, education and tourism.

The agreement is specifically for operating, consolidating and expanding that facility, which the release says is strategically placed along major international shipping routes and has a state-of-the-art ship lift system along with modern docking facilities.

The release introduces Drydocks World as a DP World company in its opening line and records that its Chief Executive Officer, Captain Rado Antolovic, signed the joint venture agreement with Cochin Shipyard.

The release says both Drydocks World and Cochin Shipyard will each hold half of the joint venture, with the initial capital funded through equity contributions from both parties, and it describes the arrangement as a first-of-its-kind public-private partnership in India's ship repair sector.

The release states that the scheme caters to the housing needs of urban EWS, LIG and MIG families having an annual household income up to that level, and that it helps them move from kutcha, inadequate or rented accommodation into pucca homes.

The release says the meeting was held under his chairmanship in New Delhi, and that it was he who told the states the committee would meet in the second week of every month and asked them to submit duly approved projects by the end of each month.

The Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs says that is the total number of houses approved under the second phase of the mission after the ninth meeting of the Central Sanctioning and Monitoring Committee, and that cumulative sanctions are now nearing the twenty lakh mark.

The release says the campaign has leveraged India's digital health infrastructure through this platform, which allows programme managers to monitor vaccination coverage at the district level, identify coverage gaps and missed beneficiaries, and plan the programme and its resources better.

The Ministry places that state in a different band, saying it has achieved more than 85 per cent coverage of its identified target population rather than complete coverage.

The figure covers the whole campaign since its launch in February 2026 and was announced as a milestone in the prevention of cervical cancer.

The release says the Act brings greater clarity on the summoning of bank officials in proceedings where the bank is not itself a party, and that a special cause has to be recorded in writing by the court before such a summons is issued.

The release states that the new Act replaces the Bankers' Books Evidence Act of that year and provides a modern framework for the use of banking records as evidence in keeping with the way banks work now.

The Ministry of Finance says a notification appointed that day as the date on which the provisions of the Act take effect.

The Ministry of Education says the exposition is being held as a lead-up to, and alongside, the summit that falls on those two days under India's BRICS Chairship.

The release records that the first Bharat Innovates was held there from the fourteenth to the sixteenth of June 2026, under the India-France Year of Innovation, and that Prime Minister Narendra Modi and President Emmanuel Macron inaugurated it together.

The Ministry of Education says the exposition at Bharat Mandapam is showing that many Indian deep-tech start-ups and ventures, and that they were drawn from the larger group which had taken part in the first Bharat Innovates at Nice.

Commerce Secretary Rajesh Agrawal told the opening session that trade among the BRICS countries had risen from USD 84 billion in 2003 to nearly that level by 2024, and he used the figure to argue that the grouping is a significant and fast growing market.

The Prime Minister said the group was launched in that year with only four countries, and that the Forum was being held in the year the grouping completes twenty years.