The Morning Wrap is Huffpost India's selection of interesting news and opinion from the day's newspapers.
Main News
India's Supreme Court quashed a rule allowing BCCI administrators to have commercial interests in formats such as the IPL and Champions League T20, and banned its ousted chief N Srinivasan from contesting elections.
Probably taking a cue from US warnings, the Pakistani government on Thursday banned terror organizations including Jamaat-ud-Dawa, the Haqqani network and several other terror outfits and froze all their assets and bank accounts. It also barred JuD chief and 2008 Mumbai attacks-mastermind Hafiz Mohammad Saeed, from travelling abroad.
The Times of India reports that though US and India officials have had hectic parleys in ironing out the stalled nuclear deal, a major obstruction to progress is American insistence on monitoring every piece of equipment manufactured by its companies, even if they be sourced from third-party countries.
Supreme Court advocate and patron of the Aam Aadmi Party Shanti Bhushan has praised the BJP's move to field Kiran Bedi in the upcoming Delhi Assembly elections. His son and AAP member Prashant Bhushan, however, disagrees.
Ahead of Budget 2015-16, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley on Thursday said more fuel subsidy reforms were likely to be announced to cut the Centre's fiscal deficit. He also gave indications of benign tax rates, more income in the hands of consumers and a correction in the inverted duty structure faced by some sectors.
A high security alert has been sounded around Mumbai's iconic Siddhivinayak Temple following intelligence inputs warning of a terror strike during US President Barack Obama's visit to India this weekend.
Next week, India will update the way its measures its GDP and will include wealth from its farm, corporate and unorganised sectors -- a move that will likely expand the economy's size.
Off The Front Page
Industrialist Harsh Goenka tweeted that former cricket captain, Sourav Ganguly, maybe 'joining' the Bharatiya Janata Party. However both the party and the cricketer denied the news.
Soon, nearly three-million military- and paramilitary-personnel, posted in remote areas, maybe able to electronically cast their vote. The government is working on a project to link voter identity cards to biometric Aadhaar identification numbers.
The Indian Express reports that former Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG), Vinod Rai, who played a key role in publicizing corruption in key sectors, is set to join the Railways Ministry as an "honorary advisor." His new job is to advise the gargantuan railways in ushering transparency in all processes including procurement, finances, decision-making and operations.
The government may negotiate prices of patented medicines with their manufacturers before allowing pharmaceutical companies to launch them in India. The move, a first of its kind, will also likely be applied on patented drugs that are already being sold in the country.
Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar, without taking names, alleged that some former Prime Ministers had compromised the country's "deep assets" on national security.
Advertising companies in India claim that a recent tender floated by the ministry of tourism for the iconic, Rs 200 crore Incredible India campaign, disproportionally favours large, multinational firms.
Opinion
Samir Saran and Bruce Jones opine in The Hindu that the only way to ensure progress on stalled climate deals is for the US to forge an "India exception" clause at the forthcoming global climate talks in Paris.
Indrajit Gupta, in the Business Standard, criticizes the way companies hire from management institutes. He advises that recruiters would do well to plan competency-based interviews and school placement committees, on their part, need to focus on competency-matching.
Prem Shankar Jha in The Indian Express says that RBI Governor Raghuram Rajan may have done too little to stimulate the Indian economy.