• The eminent Bengali poet and writer Sarat Kumar Mukherjee, known to be part of the post-Modernist poets' group along with Sunil Ganguly and Shakti Chattopadhyay, died in the early hours of Dec 21  after a cardiac arrest.

• Mukherjee, also known as Sarat Mukhopadhyay, often wrote under the pseudonym 'Trishanku', and was renowned for poems such as 'To God' and ‘Birajamohan'.

• He had turned 90 on August 15.

• Goa Congress' former working president Aleixo Reginaldo Lourenco joined the Mamata Banerjee-led Trinamool Congress (TMC) in Kolkata , ahead of the Goa Assembly polls due early next year.

• Lourenco also resigned as a member of the Goa Legislative Assembly as well as from the Congress  before joining TMC.

·       The finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman on Dec 20 said that banks have recovered Rs 13,109.17 crore from asset sale of fugitives like Vijay Mallya, Nirav Modi and Mehul Choksi.

·    She said this while replying to a discussion on the second batch of Supplementary Demands for Grants which was approved by the Lok Sabha amid uproar by the Opposition over various issues.

·       The Supplementary Demands for Grants authorised the government to spend an additional Rs 3.73 lakh crore during the current fiscal.

·       The extra spending include infusion of over Rs 62,000 crore into the company that holds residual assets and liabilities of Air India, Rs 58,430 crore by way of additional fertiliser subsidy, Rs 53,123 crore towards payment of pending export incentives and Rs 22,039 crore to rural development ministry for transfer to the National Rural Employment Guarantee Fund.

·       The latest recovery was Rs 792 crore from the sale of assets belonging to Mallya and others on July 16, 2021.

·       Responding to various issues, including price rise, raised by the Opposition during the debate, she said the government is taking measures to cool down prices of edible oil and other essential commodities.

·       On the states' financial position, the Finance Minister said that the Centre in the first eight months of the fiscal has already transferred 86.4 per cent of what was provided in the full year 2019-20.

·       Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal on Dec 20 announced that the government is all set to launch a Teachers’ University in the city to bring in good quality teachers.

·       Kejriwal said the Delhi cabinet has approved the bill designed for the university. The Teachers’ University bill will now be presented in the forthcoming legislative assembly session.

·       The university will offer a four-year integrated teacher education programme after Class 12. The courses will be available for students from Humanities, Science and Commerce streams – BA-BEd, BSc-BEd and BCom-BEd.

·      ·       The Election Laws (Amendment) Bill, 2021, which seeks to link electoral rolls with the Aadhaar ecosystem to weed out duplication, was passed in Rajya Sabha on Dec 20.

·       Earlier in the day, the bill was passed in the Lok Sabha.

·       The bill seeks to allow electoral registration officers to seek the Aadhaar number of people who want to register as voters "for the purpose of establishing the identity".

·       Introducing the bill, Union Law Minister Kiren Rijiju said the legislation will end bogus voting in the country and make the electoral process more credible.

·       However, opposition parties led by Congress opposed the bill, saying it will infringe the fundamental rights of citizens.

·       They also alleged that the bill will violate the Supreme Court judgement on Aadhaar. out duplication, was passed in Rajya Sabha on Dec 20.

·       Earlier in the day, the bill was passed in the Lok Sabha.

·       The bill seeks to allow electoral registration officers to seek the Aadhaar number of people who want to register as voters "for the purpose of establishing the identity".

·       Introducing the bill, Union Law Minister Kiren Rijiju said the legislation will end bogus voting in the country and make the electoral process more credible.

·       However, opposition parties led by Congress opposed the bill, saying it will infringe the fundamental rights of citizens.

·       They also alleged that the bill will violate the Supreme Court judgement on Aadhaar.

·       The  Union Home and Cooperation Minister Amit Shah has said that the Centre will come up with various measures to strengthen the cooperative movement in the country aiming to set up a transparent system for agriculture finance.

·       Speaking at the convocation ceremony of Vaikunth Mehta National Institute of Cooperative Management (VAMNICOM) in Pune , Shah said that the government will amend the multi-state Cooperative Act and try to plug all loopholes besides taking other measures.

·       He also said that a new cooperative policy will be brought soon.

·       Actor Aishwarya Rai Bachchan on Dec 20  appeared before the Enforcement Directorate (ED)  for questioning in a case linked to the 2016 'Panama Papers' global tax leaks case.

·       The 48-year-old daughter-in-law of superstar Amitabh Bachchan is being questioned and her statement is being recorded under the provisions of the Foreign Exchange Management Act (FEMA).

·       Dubbed 'Panama Papers', an investigation of a stockpile of records from Panamanian legal firm Mossack Fonseca by the Washington-based International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) in 2016 had named several world leaders and celebrities who allegedly stashed away money abroad in offshore companies.

·       The ED has been probing the case linked to the Bachchans since 2016-17.

·       It had issued notices to the Bachchan family asking them to explain their foreign remittances since 2004 under the Reserve Bank of India's (RBI) Liberalised Remittance Scheme (LRS) and regulated under the Foreign Exchange Management Act (FEMA).

·       Some documents were submitted by the Bachchans to the agency then.

·       Aishwarya Rai Bachchan, married to Amitabh Bachchan's actor son Abhishek, was stated by the ICIJ to have links with an offshore entity in the British Virgin Islands (BVI) that was created in 2005. Her family was also stated to be part of this offshore entity that had an "initial authorised capital of USD 50,000." The company was reportedly dissolved in 2008.

·       Abhishek Bachchan has also been examined by the ED in the past in another instance linked to the offshore leaks case .

·       The government had created a multi-agency group (MAG) of central investigative agencies under the chairman of the Central Board of Direct Taxes (CBDT) that also comprised officials from the ED, Reserve Bank of India (RBI) and the Financial Intelligence Unit (FIU) to monitor probe into the Panama Papers and similar global tax leaks cases.

·       The death toll from the strongest typhoon  (Rai) to batter the Philippines this year climbed to 375, with more than 50 others still missing and several central provinces struggling with downed communications and power outages and pleading for food and water.

·       At its strongest, Typhoon Rai packed sustained winds of 195 kilometres (121 miles) per hour with gusts of up to 270 kph (168 mph) before blowing out into the South China Sea.