News In Short 22-07-2026

‘Angen’ wins National Award

Syllabus: GS1/Art and Culture

Context

• Jharkhand’s Santali Film ‘Angen’ has won the 72nd National Film Award for Best Debut Film of a Director in the Non-Feature category.

About

• It is the first Santali film to receive a National Film Award.
• It is directed by Ravi Raj Murmu, it is a short film running for 12 minutes and 10 seconds inspired by a mystical folktale of Jharkhand.
• Santali is among the 22 languages included in in the Eighth Schedule of the Constitution
  • The Eighth Schedule to the Constitution of India lists the official languages of the Republic of India.
  • Bodo, Dogri, Maithili and Santali were added by the 92nd Amendment Act of 2003.

National Film Awards

• The National Film Awards (NFA) were established in 1954 to promote cinematic excellence in India.
• They are presented every year by the Government to celebrate excellence in filmmaking. 
  • These awards recognise the best films, performances, and technical achievements across various languages and genres. 
• Eligibility: Films certified by the Central Board of Film Certification (CBFC) between January 1 and December 31 of the previous year are eligible.
• The awards are announced by a jury appointed by the Directorate of Film Festivals and are presented by the President of India. 
• The first Best Actor and Best Actress awards were given to Uttam Kumar and Nargis, respectively, in 1968.
  • The Best Actress award was initially called ‘Urvashi’ and the Best Actor award was called ‘Bharat’.

Source: IE

Batukeshwar Dutt

Syllabus: GS1/Modern History

Context

• The government paid tribute to revolutionary and freedom fighter Batukeshwar Dutt on his death anniversary.

About

• Batukeshwar Dutt was an Indian revolutionary in the early 1900s.
• He was born on November 18, 1910, in the Burdwan district of Bengal. 
• He was a member of the Hindustan Socialist Republican Association.
• He was convicted in the Delhi Assembly Bomb Case on June 12, 1929, he spent nine years in prisons across India.
  • In each jail he resorted to hunger strikes, twice fasting for over a month, demanding humane treatment for political prisoners.
• After his release, he participated in the Quit India Movement of Mahatma Gandhi and was again jailed for four years.
• He died on 20 July 1965 in the AIIMS in Delhi after his long illness. 
• He was cremated in Hussainiwala near Firozepur in Punjab where Bhagat Singh, Rajguru and Sukhdev were also cremated many years ago.

About Hindustan Republican Association (HRA)

• Founded: Kanpur, 1924.
• Founders: Ram Prasad Bismil, Ashfaqullah Khan, Sachindra Nath Bakshi, Sachindranath Sanyal, Jogesh Chandra Chatterjee.
• Core Principle: Establishment of a federal republic through armed struggle and people’s participation.

About Hindustan Socialist Republican Association (1928)

• Founded: Feroz Shah Kotla, Delhi, 1928.
• Key Leaders: Bhagat Singh, Sukhdev, Shiv Verma, Chandrashekhar Azad, Vijay Kumar Sinha.
• Core Principle: Building a Socialist Republic of India; combining political liberation with socio-economic transformation.

Source: AIR

Nifty500 Ahimsa Index

Syllabus: GS3/ Economy

In News

• NSE Indices Limited (NSE’s index-building arm) has rolled out the Nifty500 Ahimsa Index, a stock market index built entirely around the idea of non-violence towards animals.

About 

• The Nifty500 Ahimsa Index picks companies from the Nifty 500 that don’t profit from harming animals, and tracks their combined stock performance. Instead of just screening for environment or governance scores like a typical ESG index, this one asks a simpler question: does this company’s business hurt animals or not? As of now, it holds 326 companies.
• The idea is to give investors a ready-made way to put their money only into “cruelty-free” businesses.
• It’s a joint effort between NSE Indices Limited and the Ahimsagain Foundation. 

How Companies Get Sorted?

Every company gets a colour band under the AIM framework:

• Green: Business is aligned with Ahimsa. These are the only ones that make it into the index.
• Orange: Limited or indirect involvement in animal-related harm (think hotels serving non-vegetarian food, some FMCG or apparel firms, and most financial companies). Excluded.
• Red: Direct involvement in meat, dairy, leather, animal testing — and interestingly, also alcohol, tobacco, weapons, and gambling, since these fall foul of the broader non-violence principle the Foundation follows.
• Exclusions: Excludes companies involved in meat, dairy, poultry, leather, cosmetics, fashion using wool/leather, and pharmaceutical firms engaging in animal testing.

Why it Matters?

• It also stretches the definition of ESG itself. Until now, ethical investing in India has largely meant environment, governance, and labour practices. This index adds animal welfare as a screening criterion in its own right, something closer to Gandhi’s idea of Ahimsa as a lived principle, not just a strategy, extended here into how people choose to put their money to work.

Source: TH

Karlapat Bauxite Block

Syllabus: GS3/ Economy

In News

• Some of India’s biggest industrial groups are eyeing Odisha’s Karlapat bauxite block.

About Karlapat Bauxite Block

• Karlapat is among Odisha’s largest bauxite deposits. It accounted for 41 per cent of India’s bauxite resources. 
  • Odisha is the largest bauxite-producing state in India, accounting for over 70% of the country’s total output. Other major bauxite-producing states include Jharkhand, Gujarat, Maharashtra, Chhattisgarh, Madhya Pradesh, and Andhra Pradesh.
• According to the Directorate of Geology, Government of Odisha, it has an estimated resource of about 207 million tonnes, comprising 153 million tonnes of proved reserves and 54 million tonnes of possible reserves. 
• Karlapat bauxite deposit is a greenfield mining block, which means it has not previously been commercially mined.

Why is it important?

• Bauxite is the only commercial ore used to produce aluminium. 
  • Bauxite here is formed through millions of years of chemical weathering (laterisation) which slowly broke down the original Precambrian rocks, mainly khondalites (garnet-sillimanite-graphite gneisses) and charnockites, leaving behind an aluminium-rich residue.
• Aluminium is the second most abundant metal used by industry after silica-based materials and finds applications across transport, construction, power, chemicals and manufacturing.

Source: BS

Exolanet Beta Pictoris d

Syllabus: GS3/Space 

In News

• NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) has identified a new exoplanet named Beta Pictoris d. 
  • Exoplanets or extrasolar planets, are any planets orbiting stars outside our solar system.

Beta Pictoris

• Beta Pictoris is located in the easel-shaped southern constellation Pictor and 63 light-years from Earth.
• It is a nearby system in the Milky Way offering a rare glimpse of the interactions between newborn planets and the disk of dust and debris left behind from their formation. 

• Beta Pictoris d is the third known planet orbiting the star Beta Pictoris, after Beta Pictoris b and Beta Pictoris c.
  • This makes Beta Pictoris only the second planetary system known to have three directly imaged exoplanets. 
• It is slightly bigger than Jupiter and takes 91 years to orbit its star, a little longer than it takes Uranus to orbit our Sun. 

Source: TH

White-bellied Heron

Syllabus: GS3/Species 

In News

• The Forest Advisory Committee has in-principle approved the 1,200 MW Lohit Hydroelectric Project, which can threaten the White-bellied Heron habitat.

White-bellied Heron (Ardea insignis)

• It is among the world’s most elusive birds, nesting along fast-flowing rivers lined with old-growth forests.
• Habitat: It is primarily recorded from small or large rivers, usually with sand or gravel bars, often within or adjacent to subtropical/tropical broadleaved forest, from the lowlands up to at least 1,500 m, and marshes/lakes near wet grasslands
  •  It is known to inhabit Himalayan river systems up to elevations of about 1,500 m above sea level.
  • It depends on fast-flowing, shallow rivers and old-growth riparian forests for hunting fish, nesting, and roosting.
• Distribution in India:   India has only 6-9 individuals found in the Noa-Dehing, Lahm and Lohit rivers of Arunachal Pradesh.
  • The basin of the Lohit River harbours nearly 70% of the species population of India.
• Threats: The main threats are presumed to be widespread loss, degradation and disturbance of forest and wetlands.
  • The species is also very sensitive to human disturbance
• Protection status:  It has been listed as Critically Endangered on the IUCN Red List since 2007.
  • It is also protected under Schedule I of the Wildlife Protection Act, 1972.

Source:TH