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
While producer Rahul Raj Singh has been booked for abetting Balika Vadhu actress Pratyusha Banerjee's suicide, his former girlfriend Saloni Sharma, spoke up against the couple. Sharma claimed that Singh had been 'two-timing' her and Banerjee, and that she was assaulted by the couple when she had gone to pick up some business-related money from Singh.
In a first-ever ranking Prime Minister's Office ranking of union ministers on how efficiently they respond to grievances on Twitter, External Affairs minister Sushma Swaraj topped the list, followed by Railway Minister Suresh Prabhu. Both Prabhu and Swaraj, have helped people out of sticky situations in the country and abroad based on their pleas for help on Twitter.
Maharashtra has become the first state in India to pass a law which says that with the exception of the courts, no one can act as judge, jury and executioner. On Wednesday, a day before the 125th birth anniversary of Dalit icon BR Ambedkar, the state legislature unanimously outlawed the social boycott of individuals by any person or any extra-judicial group/s in Maharashtra.
45-year-old Roja (1992) actor Arvind Swamy will be seen in a Hindi film for the first time since TK Rajeev Kumar's Raja Ko Rani Se Pyar Ho Gaya (2000), which released more than 15 years ago. He plays the lead in the upcoming Hindi-Tamil bilingual drama Dear Dad, whose trailer was released online on Thursday.
Main News
A week after Pakistan’s envoy to India said that the peace process between the two countries was suspended, Pakistan’s foreign office spokesman, said that both countries were in contact with each other and it was hoped that dates for foreign secretary-level talks would be decided soon. He also cautioned against foreclosing any options.
The Delhi government is all set to roll out the second phase of the odd-even scheme on Friday with 2,000 traffic personnel, 580 enforcement officials and over 5,000 civil defence volunteers being deployed on the roads of the national capital daily for 15 days. The traffic department has identified 200 intersections in the city where their personnel will be deployed in teams, with their sizes depending upon the volume of traffic in those intersections.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi will lay the foundation stone for India's largest power plant Patratu Vidyut Utpadan Nigam Limited (PVUNL) in Jharkhand on April 24.
Off The Front Page
Controversial author Kancha Ilaiah stirred up a new storm on Thursday when he said that vegetarianism is anti-nationalism. "For me, my nation starts with eating beef. Unfortunately, we gave up eating beef and our brains are not growing now. There is not enough protein," said Ilaiah, speaking on BR Ambedkar's political empowerment in a function.
To honour India's oldest serving soldier, Marshal of the Air Force Arjan Singh, who turned 97 on Thursday, Chief of Air Staff Arup Raha announced that a crucial air base at Pangarh in West Bengal would be named as Air Force Station Arjan Singh. With careful planning and wisdom, Singh was crucial in out-foxing the Pakistan Air Force, which had top-of-the-line US jets fighting against India's old Gnats and Vampire fighters during the 1965 Indo-Pak war.
Cambodia is looking towards India to bring wild tigers back to its forests where they were recently declared 'functionally extinct'. A formal proposal from the Southeast Asian country to get some tigers from India is expected to be received later this year.
Opinion
In Maharashtra, new legislation against social boycott highlights an older syndrome — the rush to legislate to 'fix' a complex social issue, says an editorial in The Indian Express. "Indian penal law already has ample provisions to punish discriminatory practices based on caste, gender or faith. If the Maharashtra administration has failed to enforce these, the problem must be addressed at that level, instead of bringing in a new law," says the editorial.
AFSPA is supposed to shield the army charged with guarding us. But who will watch the watchmen, asks Dushyant Arora in his column in the Mumbai Mirror. "It is clear that the murder of innocent civilians is no longer restricted to so-called collateral damage, but has become uncomfortably frequent... How are the victims of this law and their loved ones expected to react to their fate? Can they be justifiably expected to chant 'Bharat Mata ki Jai'," he writes.
The use, misuse and abuse of water in the Maharashtra IPL matter is not about water alone. It goes beyond even the issue of money and relates to our priorities as a nation, says Gopalkrishna Gandhi in his column in The Hindu. "Alongside the matches, a far greater match is on: that between the machinations of money and the desiccations of drought. But we cannot blame Cricket Inc. alone. The cricket-crazy are equally, if not more, to blame. They must have their fun, come rain come sun. The Great Indian Middle Class does not realise that its on-screen sportoxication is, in times like these, complicit in a great wrong. This complicity by the urban Indian middle classes in its own exploitation would not be half as gross if it were not happening in a drought," he writes.
Contact HuffPost India
Also On HuffPost:
