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 Rajya Sabha proceedings were disrupted by MPs shouting slogans over Hyderabad student Rohith Vemula's death and the JNU controversy. However, the highlight of the day was the heated argument between HRD Minister Smriti Irani and BSP chief Mayawati.
The Haryana government refuted a report by The Tribune that at least 10 women were allegedly raped near the National Highway in Murthal during the Jat agitation, calling it "totally false, misleading and not based on facts”. The Punjab and Haryana high court have meanwhile taken suo moto cognizance of the media report, referring the matter to the court of the acting chief justice.
At a time when the media’s role has come under scrutiny for inciting passions in the JNU row, a journalist in Agra asked for arrested JNU students to be raped in jail. Later, he claimed it was not his post and removed it.
A small plane crashed in Nepal due to bad weather, killing all 23 people on board, a police official said. This is the country's second air disaster in as many years.
Donald Trump, the controversial Republican presidential front-runner, has added India to the list of countries that he says are ripping off jobs from the US and has pledged to bring them back if elected president.
Main News
While JNU student president Kanhaiya Kumar’s bail plea was adjourned till February 29, art students painted the walls of his house at his native, Masnadpur in Bihar, with slogans demanding freedom from feudalism, capitalism and Brahmanism.
Illegal Indian immigrants in the US could be among the worst affected if Donald Trump implements harsh anti-immigration measures as the next President, says a recent study. A report concluded that one-third of all Asian illegal immigrants who were detected while attempting to enter the US, between 2007 and 2015, were from India.
In a green move that will also cut down expenses, the Railway Ministry will be using 12 lakh A4 sheets less in presenting its Budget for the next fiscal, and would rely on IT tools instead to convey the information.
Expressing concern over damage to public and private properties during violent protests, the Supreme Court said it would lay down “parameters” to fix accountability for losses on organisers as the country cannot be held to “ransom”.
Among the articles actor Sanjay Dutt will carry home after walking out of Pune’s Yerwada Central Prison today will be a clutch of paper bags he prepared while serving time. Dutt, jail sources say, wants to show these items to his family as he considers them to be his most valued possessions.
Off The Front Page
A Mainpuri villager is shelling out Rs 10,000 to save sparrows. Mahendra Singh is all set to spend this money to buy 50 custom-made nests and distribute them free of cost among the locals, to be installed outside their houses in a bid to attract sparrows.
At an inter-college in Agra, a young parent was caught taking the Maths exam in the place of his son. “My son is weak in Maths and I wanted to help him,” he explained.
A government-run technical training institute near Hyderabad does not have a single functional toilet on campus. As a result, its 476 girls are forced to make a dash for the college field, terrace or an “abandoned” classroom, each time they need to relieve themselves.
A young couple's sexual adventure in a speeding car ended in tragedy after the man lost control of the vehicle and crashed into a truck, leaving him dead on the spot. The woman is recuperating in hospital with severe injuries on her head and a broken leg.
Opinion
“I forged two of my most enduring friendships more than 30 years ago. The friendships, which were made on my university campus in Nagpur, have transcended time, ideology and death,” writes Sujata Anandan in the Hindustan Times. “I would like to think it was the free atmosphere at the university, uninterrupted by government ham-handedness, that shaped both my friends’ politics and liberalism. They did not have to choose between one or the other. They could be both religious and liberal. We were never in the league of the JNU but the NSUI and ABVP were even then bitterly opposed to each other.”
In Pampore, military personnel were called on to carry out a room-intervention operation in a building housing civilians — a task for which they are neither intensively trained nor equipped. The NSG was put in charge at Pathankot — a very different kind of operation, involving cordoning large areas. Gurdaspur demonstrated, to all willing to see, exactly what happens when a police force which can’t even meet its fuel bills, let alone train at a firing range, meets well-resourced enemies, writes Praveen Swami in The Indian Express.
For some time now, free speech and dissent have been on the retreat in Chhattisgarh. The official excuse for this has been the ongoing civil conflict between the state and Maoist insurgents. But the fact that individuals who have no connection with the conflict are being forced out, suggests a larger anti-democratic agenda at work, according to an editorial in The Hindu.
Contact HuffPost India