·       Ash Barty's Wimbledon title and hold on the No.1 ranking helped her win WTA Player of the Year for the second time in voting results announced.

·       Barbora Krejcikova was selected as Most Improved Player and shared the Doubles Team of the Year award with Katerina Siniakova on Dec 7 .

·       Krejcikova was the first woman since 2000 to win both the singles and doubles championships at the French Open.

·       Emma Raducanu was picked as Newcomer of the Year after winning the U.S.

·       -----Open at age 18 and becoming the first player to go from qualifying rounds all the way to a Grand Slam title.

·       Carla Suárez Navarro is the Comeback Player of the Year after returning from Hodgkin's Lymphoma to play on tour and represent Spain in the Billie Jean King Cup finals.

·       Barty also was the WTA Player of the Year in 2019.

·       ----This season, she led the tour with five titles, including her second Grand Slam championship at the All England Club.

·       ---The 25-year-old Australian also finished at No.1 in the year-end rankings for the third season in a row.

·       Krejcikova had never won a singles title before taking three in 2021, including at Roland Garros, and she rose from No.65 at the end of 2020 to a high of No.3 in the singles rankings.

·       Krejcikova and Siniakova were recognized as the Doubles Team of the Year for the second time, after 2018.

·       ----They won the French Open, the WTA Finals and an Olympic gold medal together this year.

·       The IWF World Championships and Commonwealth Senior Championships has started  in Tashkent, Uzbekistan on Dec 7  with 20 Indian weightlifters, 10 each in men and women categories, taking part in it. The 2020 Tokyo Olympics silver medallist Mirabai Chanu had decided to skip the event with Jhilli Dalabehera replacing her in the 49 kg.

·       The Commonwealth Championships will be held in conjunction with the World Championships and it will be open only to Commonwealth nations. Competitions will be held in 10 weight categories in men and women sections. Results from an event will be drawn for the World Championships and Commonwealth Championships separately.

Indian team

Men: Sanket Sargar 55kg, Guru Raja 61kg, Jeremy Larinnunga 67kg, Achinta Sheuli 73kg, Ajay Singh 81kg, Amarjit Guru 81kg, Vikas Thakur 96kg, Jagdish Vishwakarma 96kg, Lovepreet Singh 109kg, Gurdeep Singh +109kg

·       In a setback for Maharashtra government, the Supreme Court on Dec 6  stayed the 27 per cent reservation for the Other Backward Classes (OBC) in local body elections in the state until further orders.

·       The SC  bench, however, made it clear that election process for the other seats would continue.

·The bench observed that the 27 per cent OBC quota should not have been implemented without setting up a commission and without collecting data regarding inadequacy of representation in local governments.

·       Claiming the coal supply is far from normal, a captive power producers’ body  has urged the government to normalise the coal supplies to Captive Power Plant (CPP) based industries or it would lead to an irrevocable collateral damage of these national assets.

·       The Indian Captive Power Producers Association (ICPPA) said the shortage of coal supply will impact the aluminum industry operations the most as any power outage in aluminum plants will lead to complete shutdown, which will take minimum 12 months of recovery, resulting in job loss of more than 8 lakh people.

·       However, the government has said that Coal India Limited (CIL) dispatched 291.72 million tonne during Apr-Oct 2021 to enhance coal availability across the country. It is 54 MT more coal against the same period of last year.

·       The Prime Minister Narendra Modi on  Dec 7  dedicated to the nation three mega projects, including an AIIMS and a major fertiliser plant, in Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath's home turf Gorakhpur.

·       The other projects he inaugurated is a Regional Medical Research Centre of the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR).

·       The  three big-ticket projects are worth over Rs 9,600 crore.

·       The newly built fertiliser plant will be operated by the Hindustan Urvarak Rasayan Limited (HURL).

·       The Gorakhpur AIIMS, built at a cost of Rs 1,011 crore, will benefit not only the people of eastern Uttar Pradesh but also a huge population of Bihar, Jharkhand and Nepal with its world-class health facilities.

·       Similarly, the regional medical research centre set up at a cost of Rs 36 crore will facilitate the test and research of vector-borne diseases.

·       The high-tech lab will decrease the dependency of the area on big cities for tests related to vector-borne diseases.

·       The inauguration of the three big projects comes just months ahead of the Uttar Pradesh assembly polls.

·       The  Finance Ministry has  informed Parliament that of the nearly 44 crore Jan Dhan bank account holders in the country, more than 55 per cent are women account holders .

·       The Minister of State for Finance Bhagwat Karad said in a written reply in the Lok Sabha that there are as many as 43.90 crore beneficiaries of the PMJDY (Pradhan Mantri Jan Dhan Yojana) in the country as of November 17, 2021,

·       Of these, as many as 24.42 crore are female beneficiaries as informed by the banks, which comprises 55.6% of the total PMJDY accounts .

·       The government had announced the PMJDY on August 15, 2014, under the National Mission on Financial Inclusion with a view to increasing banking penetration, promote financial inclusion and provide at least one bank account per household across the country.

·

·       The scheme was extended beyond 14 August 2018 with the focus on opening of accounts shifting from 'every household' to 'every unbanked adult' with certain modifications.

·       There is no requirement to maintain any minimum balance in PMJDY accounts.

·       In a separate question on Sukanya Samriddhi Account (SSA), Minister of State for Finance Pankaj Chaudhary said: "The number of new accounts opened under Sukanya Samriddhi Account from April 1, 2018 to October 31, 2021 is 1,42,73,910.

·       " Uttar Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh are the top five states in that order with the highest number of SSA accounts. Lakshadweep, Andaman & Nicobar Islands, Ladakh, Mizoram and Sikkim rank at the bottom five.

·       Whereas the public sector banks accounted for the bulk of such account opening at 96.24%, private sector banks had a share of 3.76% in opening such accounts since the launch of the scheme till October 31, 2021.

·       The Centre and Army authorities on Dec 6   told the Supreme Court that after its last year's verdict, 487 Women Short Service Commission Officers (WSSCOs) have been granted Permanent Commission out of the 615 who were considered for it.

·       The top court which recorded its appreciation for all the concerned authorities including Chief of Army Staff for acting fair and objective manner to resolve the issue directed that 12 WSSCOs, who have been released from service during the pendency of proceedings, shall be deemed to continue in service and be granted the Permanent Commission (PC).

·       The former Telangana employees association president Ch Vittal joined the Bharatiya Janata Party , alleging that there is no respect for leaders associated with the movement for the state's formation in the TRS government there.

·       He joined the party in the presence of Union minister Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi, BJP general secretary Tarun Chugh, state party chief Bandi Sanjay Kumar and its chief national spokesperson Anil Baluni.