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
Google honoured legendary Indian cartoonist Mario Miranda with a 'doodle' on the late artist's 90th birth anniversary. The artist, who passed away in Goa in 2011, was famous for his independent style of creating cartoons and characters, and portraying the bustling cityscape of Mumbai, featuring complex, multi-layered scenes.
Ankit Love, a British-Dogra musician who calls himself the “Maharaja of the sovereign state of Jammu and Kashmir”, is the youngest candidate in the London Mayor race. The 32-year-old is the son of Jammu and Kashmir National Panthers Party patron Bhim Singh. He grew up in Surrey and set up the ‘One Love Party’ last year with former Cambridge University graduate Finn Grant in "a dorm room".
Expressing his disapproval over awarding Malala Yousafzai with a Nobel Peace Prize, spiritual guru Sri Sri Ravi Shankar claimed that the 16-year-old Pakistani girl was given the award "without even looking at what she has contributed".
The teaser for Pa. Ranjith's Kabali, starring the Tamil superstar Rajinikanth broke all sorts of internet records by being the fastest Indian — and, according to some reports, Asian — film promo to reach the milestone of 5 million views in a mere 24 hours.
Main News
After the former Indian Air Force (IAF) chief SP Tyagi was questioned by the CBI, it came to light that he alleged met AgustaWestland middlemen seven times — from 2004 to 2007 — and travelled to Italy thrice after his retirement.
The Obama administration asked Pakistan to "put forward" its "national funds" to buy the eight F-16 fighter jets as they had put a hold on use of the US tax payers' money for this purpose. The US Congress has also objected to using FMF (foreign military financing) to support the deal.
The Supreme Court is scheduled to hear a fresh plea from a few states, such as Jammu and Kashmir, and some private medical colleges that NEET for admissions to medical courses such as MBBS and BDS should not be imposed on them. They also want to be allowed to conduct their own entrance examinations.
Over 400 taxi drivers had gathered near the Delhi-Gurgaon border to protest against Delhi government's crackdown on diesel-run taxis, and surge pricing.
Off The Front Page
Bollywood actor Sanjay Dutt, who was released from jail in February, made his first public appearance on a BJP platform in Mumbai. Dutt was the chief guest at a Maharashtra Day function organised by city BJP president Ashish Shelar and another leader, Mohit Khamboj, in suburban Malad west.
Twitter went bonkers on Monday after a photograph of the JNUSU leader Kanhaiya Kumar touching the feet of RJD supremo Lalu Prasad Yadav went viral. From calling him 'corrupt' to accusing him of politicising his situation, Kumar dominated the social media's attention on Monday. Kumar had also met Yadav after the JNU controversy had broke out.
Indian Premier League season 9 star and Gujarat Lion's teammate James Faulkner has been having a gala time in India, exploring the cuisine, taking in the scenic beauties of the country. In his recent Instagram post, Faulkner even showed off wearing a traditional Gujarati attire during a shoot for promoting Gujarat Tourism.
Opinion
Maharashtra’s social contract is fraying. While the state is sitting on top of a political economy of chaos and a social contract, its political elites cannot comprehend, or handle, the situation, writes Suhas Palshikar in The Indian Express. "But even if the elite were to understand the complication, they do not have the trust of the public or legitimacy to address these issues. They would, indeed, get elected and re-elected, but their attempts to broker peace among battling sections and convince people of long-term solutions are unlikely to be received with sympathy. In the absence of leaders with legitimacy, Maharashtra seems to be moving towards a politics marked by a rabid mobilisational precipice," he says.
The BJP need have no fears on the score of Mayawati and Mulayam Singh Yadav coming together, says Neerja Chowdhury in Hindustan Times. "The two years of the BJP rule have fuelled Muslim fears to such an extent that they are increasingly voting more strategically to defeat whoever can take on the BJP... The UP polls are almost a year away. And yet parties are already positioning themselves for the mother of all battles. It will be a particularly high-stakes election for the BJP, expected either to give it the adrenaline it needs for 2019 or to hasten its decline. Remember, the party could not have got a majority on its own but for UP," she writes.
Unless there is a procedure for notification of groups moving out of the reserved category, demands for reservation by groups like the Jats, Gujjars and Patidars will continue, says Sonalde Desai in The Hindu. "One of the ways of dismantling the quota raj is to ensure that the reserved category certificate is not a currency that is hoarded by groups who no longer need it. This involves periodic recertification into the reserved category. Unfortunately, the current system has an established, if imperfect, procedure for notification of new groups into the reserved category but not for moving groups out of the reserved category," he says.
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