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The Morning Wrap: Umar Khalid Back In JNU, Jat Agitation Causes Disruption

The Morning Wrap: Umar Khalid Back In JNU, Jat Agitation Causes Disruption
KARNAL, INDIA - FEBRUARY 21: Roads blocked as Jat community protested on the roads demanding reservations in government services, on February 21, 2016 in Karnal, India. Jat protests demanding reservation under OBC category have taken on a caste colour with violence erupting across Haryana. Reports from Rohtak indicate that Jat protestors looted and vandalised properties owned by people from other castes. Jat leaders rejected the offer made by the state government and said that the stir would continue till their demand is met. (Photo by Ravi Kumar/Hindustan Times via Getty Images)
Hindustan Times via Getty Images
KARNAL, INDIA - FEBRUARY 21: Roads blocked as Jat community protested on the roads demanding reservations in government services, on February 21, 2016 in Karnal, India. Jat protests demanding reservation under OBC category have taken on a caste colour with violence erupting across Haryana. Reports from Rohtak indicate that Jat protestors looted and vandalised properties owned by people from other castes. Jat leaders rejected the offer made by the state government and said that the stir would continue till their demand is met. (Photo by Ravi Kumar/Hindustan Times via Getty Images)

The Morning Wrap is HuffPost India's selection of interesting news and opinion from the day's newspapers. Subscribe here to receive it in your inbox each weekday morning.

Essential HuffPost

The Haryana government decided to grant the OBC (other backward castes) status to Jats after their community leaders held a meeting with the Union Home Minister, said the BJP in-charge of the state. Haryana was on the edge as fresh incidents of arson and violence shook the state with a ninth town being brought under curfew. So far, the agitation has claimed 10 lives.

One more Army officer was killed in the ongoing encounter between terrorists and security forces in J&K's Pampore, taking the death toll to six. Captain Tushar Mahajan from Udhampur, from the elite Para unit, succumbed to his injuries in the ongoing operation that started on Saturday.

The national capital has run out of water and all schools are to remain closed, the Delhi government announced. The violent agitation carried out by Jats in Haryana has hit the water supply for neighbouring Delhi.

An India trade exhibition scheduled to be held from February 26-28 in Pakistan was cancelled following threat of terrorists attack. Around 100 companies from various sectors had signed up to participate in the event.

In a bid to attract more international talent, the prestigious IITs for the first time are planning hold their entrance tests in Singapore, UAE, Ethiopia and SAARC nations next year to select foreign students for undergraduate and postgraduate courses.

US President Barack Obama responded to a video of a young girl bursting into tears when she found out Obama wouldn't be president for much longer.

Main News

Umar Khalid and four other JNU students facing charges of sedition returned to the campus, saying they wanted to be a part of the “struggle” against branding the university anti-national.

The attack on tribal activist and AAP leader Soni Sori comes days after her failed attempt to lodge a police complaint against controversial IPS officer and Bastar range Inspector General of Police SRP Kalluri for allegedly intimidating her.

Facing a cash squeeze and a bulging pension bill, the Railways have launched a first-of-its-kind exercise to physically verify whether all its retired employees, aged between 80 and 100 years, are still alive.

The Forest Department said a fire at Bandipur National Park in Karnataka had damaged 133 acres. It is now suspected that the fire might have been an “act of vendetta” by villagers, who were peeved at not being appointed as forest watchers.

Ten Indian crew members of a ship, which was hijacked by pirates off the Ivory Coast, have been rescued with the help of the Nigerian Navy, External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj said. Efforts were on to secure the release of the 11th, besides a Pakistani.

Off The Front Page

The grandfather-in-law was a plundering dacoit. He is a senior income tax officer caught in corruption charges for amassing wealth way above his income. People usually hide such shady ancestral history but I-T joint commissioner Ram Avtar Verma said a sizeable portion of his wealth is associated with his wife’s grandfather — a gun-toting “daku” — and his plunder.

Lost tapes reveal that Apollo astronauts heard unexplained ‘music’ on far side of the moon. "If you’re behind the moon and hear some weird noise on your radio, and you know you’re blocked from the Earth, then what could you possibly think?”

A 55-year-old autorickshaw driver in Mumbai was rewarded by the police for returning a bag containing gold jewellery that a passenger had left behind in his vehicle. It contained cash, a gold chain, two rings and a 2 tola mangalsutra.

A girl from Delhi who arrived in Bareilly to stall the wedding of her ex-lover had to return empty-handed after the couple tied the nuptial knot in the presence of family members and relatives even as the girl was busy trying to persuade policemen to accompany her to the venue.

Opinion

L’affaire JNU is a reminder to journalism to deploy its core values in the age of digital excess and follow rules in using user-generated content at prime time, writes AS Panneerselvan in The Hindu. Any comment that does not contribute to the debate but debases the public sphere has the potential to undermine the wellspring of a democratic polity.

At stake today for all of us committed to free speech and a happy, creative culture of youthful idealism and defiance is not only the life world that is JNU, but the vibrant intellectual world of the Dalit-Bahujan youth as well. For the latter to flourish, the institutional decay of our public universities needs to be addressed, writes V Geetha in the Hindustan Times.

Pay scales, grade pays, allowances, and financial perks for Central government employees are formulated by the pay commission. The defence ministry is possibly the largest employer in the country after the railways. So it’s a mystery that no pay commission has ever had a military member advising, or dissenting, as has been the case with civil service members, writes Manvendra Singh in The Indian Express.

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This article exists as part of the online archive for HuffPost India, which closed in 2020. Some features are no longer enabled. If you have questions or concerns about this article, please contact indiasupport@huffpost.com.