News in Short

• The Supreme Court pronounced its decision upholding the constitutional validity of providing 27% quota to Other Backward Classes (OBC) in NEET All India Quota (AIQ) seats.
• A Bench led by Justice D.Y. Chandrachud observed that ‘merit’ could not be narrowed to the limit of success in open competitive exams.
• The power of the State governments to provide reservations under Article 15 (4) and (5) of the Constitution was not an “exception” to Article 15 (1).

• India’s production of crude oil, continued to decline in December, with lower output from the State-owned ONGC leading to an almost 2% drop.
• Oil production in December was 2.51 million tonnes, down from 2.55 million tonnes a year earlier and a target of 2.6 million tonnes. The output was, however, higher than 2.43 million tonnes produced in November 2021.
• ONGC, India’s biggest producer, produced 3% less crude oil at 1.65 million tonnes in December due to delays in mobilising equipment at western offshore fields.

• Indonesian parliament formally approved a bill giving go-ahead to shifting the national capital from Jakarta to Kalimantan on Borneo. New name of the capital will be Nusantara.
• First article of the bill formalised the name of the new capital Nusantara and defined the status of the city, which will become the new political center of the country with all embassies and representative offices of foreign organizations transferred there.
• Nusantara was declared a city of regional significance. Administration of Nusantara would become the state body responsible for managing the new capital.

• India opener Smriti Mandhana was named in the ICC T20 women’s Team of the Year for her superlative show in the format in 2021, but no Indian made the men’s side.
• Mandhana scored two fifties in the nine matches she played and got her team off to rapid starts regularly, as evident up by her strike-rate of 131.44.
• While Mandhana was the only Indian, several members of the English side feature in the team with Nat Scriver being named captain.