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The Morning Wrap: Goodbye MS Dhoni; Man Kills 10 Members of His Family In UP

Our selection of interesting news and opinion from the day's newspapers.
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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.

MS Dhoni stepped down as the captain of India's One Day Internationals (ODIs) and the T20 Internationals (T20I) teams. He informed the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) he would stand down from ODIs and the T20Is, but he will be available for selection for ODIs & T20Is against England. Virat Kohli is likely to take over from him.

Language politics, more than religion, will play a key role in the upcoming assembly elections in Goa, writes Tejas Mehta. The reasons behind the precedence of Konkani and Marathi over English — a foreign language — are not unrelated to religion but are also tied up with complex sociological aspects of identity.

Muslim voters do not vote en bloc or as told to by clerics, contrary to popular perception, and do not vote strategically to defeat the BJP, new evidence from 15 years of voting data shows. Ahead of the assembly elections in Uttar Pradesh, read our analysis here.

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Only three days separate the proposed national budget day and the start of the assembly poll in several states. While administratively this may not pose a problem, ethically it has raised eyebrows, especially of the Opposition. The Election Commission will take a call on the postponement of the budget date to 8 March.

Farmers from a remote village in Madhya Pradesh's Sheopur district were shocked to receive newly printed ₹2000 notes without the image of Mahatma Gandhi from a State Bank of India branch. Bank officials took back the notes but said they were "genuine", not fake as the farmers had feared.

IAS officer Rajendra Kumar, who was Principal Secretary to Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal at the time of his arrest in a corruption case in July last year, has alleged he was told by his interrogators that they would set him free if he implicated the CM. He also sought voluntary retirement from service less than a month after the notice was served to him.

The results of a survey poll released on the day the dates of the assembly elections were announced reveal the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) having a clear upper hand in Uttar Pradesh. It shows the BJP's vote share has increased from 31% in October (before the note ban) to 33% in December. It projects 206-216 seats for the party in the 403-member UP assembly as opposed to the measly 15% vote share and 47 seats the party had in 2012.

A 13-year-old boy and his parents were allegedly attacked with rod, sticks and bricks by a group of drunken men at a village in West Bengal last night after the family protested against their indecent behaviour. The youths fled the area when local people rushed to save them.

A 50-year-old man allegedly killed 10 members of his family, including nine young girls, before hanging himself to death in Uttar Pradesh's Amethi district, police said on Wednesday.The bodies were found inside the family's home with their throats slit.

On the basis of poll surveys it seems the BJP is ahead in the run-up to the assembly elections, but it has a serious contender in the newly popular Akhilesh Yadav and Mayavati's ambitious Dalit-Muslim plank. In The Hindu, Vidya Subrahmaniam looks at the big picture closely and offers some prognosis of the weeks ahead.

From the Shiv Sena to the BJP, several political parties have appropriated Shivaji, the Maratha emperor, for their own vested interests. In each case, the ruler has emerged in a new persona, with a avatar that differs from the others. Girish Kuber puts together a comprehensive picture in The Indian Express.

Goa elections are going to be an exciting affair this year as several new and smaller parties, like the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP), are trying to enter the political arena. Ketaki Ghoge explains in the Hindustan Times the twists and turns in the plot to this year's assembly polls in the state.

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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.