I had installed rclone version 1.53.3-4ubuntu1 on ubuntu 22.04 using apt 2 months ago. But it was pretty old version so I used the rclone install script i.e sudo -v ; curl | sudo bash, which installed the latest version over the ubuntu repo version
On 03 Feb 2023(according to /usr/share/doc/rclone/changelog.Debian.gz) rclone version 1.53.3-4ubuntu1.22.04.1 was released and unattended upgrade "updated" rclone to this version on 17th feb. It was actually a downgrade because now I can no longer use mega backend (which was the reason I used rclone install script), and my backup scripts were failing.
After checking apt logs here is what I got