Morning Wrap is HuffPost India's selection of interesting news and opinion from the day's newspapers.
Main News
India said yesterday that annual economic growth would accelerate to 7.4 percent in fiscal 2014, after its statisticians changed the way they measure the economy. Under the new method, the economy grew 7.5 percent in the quarter ending in December, outpacing China's 7.3 percent growth in the latest quarter and making India the fastest growing major economy in the world. Economists, including the government's own economic advisor Arvind Subramanian, have been puzzled by the new growth figures in an economy that barely a fortnight ago was assumed to be still struggling to gather momentum.
Delhi election results are to be declared today after counting began at 8 am. Exit polls indicate a win for Arvind Kejriwal-led Aam Aadmi Party. That would stop BJP's victory spree since it came to power last May and won in three out of four states. Prices of broom, AAP's symbol, have risen sharply in the capital owing to heavy demand from party workers.
Companies, officials and associates of Mukesh Ambani-led Reliance Industries Ltd hold $601 million (Rs 3,726 crore), according to documents related to HSBC account holders in the biggest leak in banking history. The details have been obtained by the Guardian and Le Monde, with an international consortium of investigative journalists. Ambani has denied having illegal Swiss accounts.
Bihar chief minister Jitan Ram Manjhi was expelled by JD(U) president Sharad Yadav, who accused him of indiscipline and demanded that Governor Kesri Nath Tripathi ask him to take a trial of strength in the Assembly within 48 hours. Former chief minister and Yadav ally Nitish Kumar went to meet the governor with 130 legislators to stake claim to forming the next government in the state.
A woman in Meerut was assaulted by a group of men while people looked on. A video of the assault taken by someone in the crowd soon went viral, triggering a storm of protest online.
Off The Front Page
The Indian government will probe the new list of account holders in HSBC's Swiss branch that were revealed in a leak, finance minister Arun Jaitley said yesterday.
BJP chief ministerial candidate Kiran Bedi's NGO Navjyoti India Foundation received funds from a diamond merchant who is under investigation by the government for tax evasion. Bedi does not intend to return the donation by Harshad Ramniklal Mehta.
The Supreme Court raised the issue of rising religious influence on civil matters, and one of the justices wondered if India will remain a secular country in the long run. The court also supported a uniform civil code. This comes days after Obama had said that religious intolerance in India would have shamed Mahatma Gandhi.
Patients in India are exposed to harmful combination of drugs, many of which are available without proper clinical trials, says a new report in medical journal Lancet. The report says that the drug regulator has failed to protect patients, and should withdraw all licenses until manufacturers provide scientific proof of their safety.
Opinion
Hasan Suroor argues in The Hindu that liberal Muslims must speak up for Shirin Dalvi, former editor of a Urdu daily, who has been targeted with a vicious hate campaign by the community's own hardline fringe.
Shamnad Basheer argues in the Indian Express that ranking countries on intellectual property regimes was misleading without considering how such countries contribute to innovation, technological learning or social welfare, goals that they are meant to foster.
Indians account for the biggest slice of cricket viewers, but viewership might decline unless the magic of 2011 is re-discovered, says an opinion in Mint. The article says that the one-day format neither appeals to the purists who prefer the higher skills on display in Test matches but nor does it meet the impatient expectations of spectators who have come to love T20.