This is the issue. I was not even able to clone a repo via terminal. Followed the steps mentioned in the link and it now works without issue. thanks :)

Including the instruction here below for it might be useful to someone.

From stackoverflow

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Make sure first that you have certificates installed on your Debian in /etc/ssl/certs

If not, reinstall them:

sudo apt-get install --reinstall ca-certificates 

Since that package does not include root certificates, add:

sudo mkdir /usr/local/share/ca-certificates/cacert.org sudo wget -P /usr/local/share/ca-certificates/cacert.org http://www.cacert.org/certs/root.crt http://www.cacert.org/certs/class3.crt sudo update-ca-certificates 

Make sure your git does reference those CA:

git config --global http.sslCAinfo /etc/ssl/certs/ca-certificates.crt

just failed to access

Package Status Info Time ▼ 
ement                          failed               fatal: unable to access 'https://github.com/alphapapa/ement.el.git/': server certificate verification failed. CAfile: none CRLfile: none 16.170102

Not keystrokes, but the frequently used commands.