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The Morning Wrap: BJP Attacks Chidambaram On Ishrat Jahan Affidavit; Dilip Kumar Out Of ICU

The Morning Wrap: BJP Attacks Chidambaram On Ishrat Jahan Affidavit; Dilip Kumar Out Of ICU
HuffPost India

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

Maharashtra's Minister for Rural Development and Water Conservation, Pankaja Munde, has been accused of "gross insensitivity" after she posted a series of selfies on Twitter clicked in Latur, reeling under drought, during a weekend tour. Munde is seen smiling at the camera against a backdrop of acres of soil being turned by earth moving machines.

Colonel Nizammudin, a close aide of late freedom fighter Subhash Chandra Bose, opened a bank account this week — at the age of 116. Nizammudin who is a resident of Mubarakpur in Uttar Pradesh, was Netaji's driver from 1943 to 1945. He opened a joint bank account with his 107-year-old wife.

Leaders of the AAP, including Delhi CM Arvind Kejriwal himself, had a field day on Twitter on Monday; pointing out that Rahul Gandhi had refused to name Captain Amarinder Singh as the party’s chief ministerial candidate for the Punjab assembly elections. Gandhi added that while the Singh was the face of the state campaign by virtue of being the state Congress chief, the chief minister would be elected by the MLAs after the election.

A day after Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal warned of 'strict action' against two leading app-based cab service providers — Uber and Ola — for hiking prices when demand is high, Uber announced that it was "suspending surge with immediate effect" in the national capital.

The Government on Monday told the Supreme Court that India shouldn't stake a claim to the famed Kohinoor diamond as 'it was neither stolen nor forcibly taken away'. Solicitor General Ranjit Kumar, said that this was the stand of the Union Ministry of Culture.

Main News

A new RTI response in the Ishrat Jahan controversy shed light upon to the fact that former home minister P Chidambaram had signed the original affidavit describing the Mumbra teen as part of a Lashkar module. Initially, the CBI had accused Ahmedabad Police Crime Branch officers and members of the Subsidiary Intelligence Bureau (SIB) of Ahmedabad of jointly having carried out a staged "encounter killing" when shooting dead four people on 15 June 2004.

India and China are close to a establishing a hotline between the two military headquarters as part of an effort to improve border management through a new round of confidence building measures (CBM). The two countries focused on CBMs through various means including establishing a hotline and increasing the local border meeting points, in addition to the five which have been already activated. Further interactions to finalise the details are also on the cards.

The Indian government is allegedly wary of signing Amitabh Bachchan as the brand ambassador for the 'Incredible India' campaign due to his name appearing in the Panama papers controversy. Bachchan and actress Priyanka Chopra had been chosen a few months ago to be part of the high-profile campaign to market the country to the tourists abroad. The brand ambassador of Gujarat Tourism, Bachchan's name was reportedly suggested by the PMO.

Off The Front Page

In an initiative to ensure that no male from the Patidar or the Patel community from Gujarat remains unmarried, the leaders from the society have forbidden its girls from marrying anybody outside their caste. The Patidars, who are fighiting against the government for quotas in jobs and education, have embarked on a drive to prevent 'their' girls from marrying outside the community. With a skewed sex ratio, Patidar men have been reduced to searching for brides in other states — going beyond caste, socio-financial status and even lingual differences in the process.

Ajay Devgn shared some thrilling footage of his action sequences from his upcoming film Shivaay. In the sequence shared on Twitter Devgn is seen battling it out in extreme weather as a chopper hovers above him, leading to an explosive snowstorm. The crew is filming at Vihren, which stands at 2,914 meters above sea-level, and is the highest peak in Bulgaria.

Veteran Bollywood actress Asha Parekh visited ailing star Dilip Kumar in the Mumbai hospital. As rumours of his 'passing away' were making rounds on Monday evening, Parekh confirmed that Kumar is in good shape and that he even went for a little walk inside the hospital. The doctors confirmed that Kumar was 'not on the ventilator and not in an ICU'. He will reportedly be discharged from the hospital in a couple of days.

Pune-based Ganpati mandals have taken it upon themselves to lend a helping hand to the drought-hit areas in Maharashtra. The mandals have taken up the task of setting up online medical assistance centres, facilitating daily water supply and are also helping villagers to dig up wells to address the water issue permanently.

Opinion

In Maharashtra, where the sugar industry and politics are twined, drought is a manmade disaster, says Girish Kuber in The Indian Express. "Government after government in the state has been run by those engaged in the gross misuse of water. In Maharashtra, they are called sugar barons — and they are large in number... In an era where the entire world is anxious and worried about climatic changes, Maharashtra is totally oblivious to the reality. It is yet to bring in concepts like water governance. Though for a while it mulled making drip irrigation mandatory for sugarcane cultivation, it is yet to enforce it. Till then, it continues to use a rudimentary technique for supplying water — flood irrigation — where an entire farm is flooded with water. One doesn’t have to be a rocket scientist to be able to see that this results in extreme wastage of water," he writes.

The suspension of Vijay Mallya’s diplomatic passport by the Ministry of External Affairs, within a week of his failing for the third time to heed an Enforcement Directorate summons to appear in connection with a money laundering probe, is a prompt and appropriate step, says an editorial in The Hindu. "Mallya has challenged the determination by banks that he is a wilful defaulter by arguing that he is personally not a borrower, and only gave a personal guarantee for corporate loans. Any credibility that one could attach to his defence will have to flow from his own conduct and submission to due process in this country, something that the Supreme Court has underscored by asking him for a possible date for his appearance and an authentic statement of his assets. The Central government must not ease the pressure on him, and must take recourse to all diplomatic and legal means to achieve the objective of bringing him back," it says.

There is no transition to a consumption-led economy; loan growth to the property sector is driving economic growth in China, writes V Anantha Nageswaran in his column in Mint. "Maintaining economic and social stability in China will continue to remain a challenge. For the world economy, China remains a time-bomb that could explode anytime. That will be the excuse for central banks in the US and in Europe to keep up their monetary expansion in many ways. Asset bubbles will keep getting bigger. The world is keeping up with its steady march towards the edge of the cliff," he writes.

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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.