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The Morning Wrap: Congress-SP Join Hands In UP; Govt Push For Aadhar Pay

Our selection of interesting news and opinion from the day's newspapers.
Adnan1 Abidi / Reuters

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.

Putting all speculations to rest, the Congress and the Samajwadi Party on Sunday finally forged an alliance for the high-voltage Uttar Pradesh Assembly polls. The Congress, which wanted to contest as many as 121 seats, has now settled for 105 seats. SP will contest 298 seats.

Jallikattu, Tamil Nadu's popular bull taming sport, was held in parts of the state on Sunday, with tens of thousands taking part but two participants were killed at one of the events. At Pudukottai, two bull vaulters were severely injured and died on the way to a hospital, police said.

Local leaders of the Trinamool Congress in Bhangar, West Bengal, routinely put pressure on villagers to sell their farmland, which culminated in a flare-up on 17 January. This has led her to take a decision to identify areas with similar characteristics and firm up a policy on the conversion of farmland to other uses. This would be incorporated into existing laws guiding conversion of farmland by the panchayats.

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Keen to push digital payments among the poor and illiterate in rural areas of the country, the government is pushing to popularise Aadhaar Pay which ensures financial transactions by just using fingerprint. Aadhaar Pay, which is merchant version of the already in use Aadhaar-enabled payment system (AEPS), will become an alternative for all online and card transactions which require password and PIN.

Bihar Police was put under "tremendous pressure" to establish foul play in the deaths of 23 schoolchildren in the Gandaman primary school midday meal tragedy in 2013. But investigations showed only "criminal negligence" on the part of the school principal, the officer in charge of the probe told The Indian Express.

Thousands of women flooded the streets as an unparalleled wave of "counter-inauguration" rolled in Washington and several other capitals on Saturday in the US, a day after the inauguration of Donald Trump's presidency. Organisers said the protests against Trump's campaign rhetoric and misogynistic behaviour drew nearly 5 million across the world, far surpassing expectations.

Finance minister Arun Jaitley may announce several measures to revamp farm infrastructure and support farmers as the National Democratic Alliance government seeks to win over this politically important section of society before crucial state elections next month, a top official familiar with the matter said.

Railway authorities believe sabotage caused the derailment of the Jagdalpur-Bhubaneswar Hirakhand Express which left 41 passengers dead and 50 injured on Saturday night. This is the third big rail accident in two months and took place in Andhra Pradesh's Vizianagaram district, near the Odisha border, a Maoist stronghold.

Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh Akhilesh Yadav released on Sunday the Samajwadi Party manifesto, which promises minorities security and greater autonomy for their institutions. His colleagues lauded him as a "son of Bharat Mata" in a pitch that is apparently aimed at countering the BJP.

While AWBI and Peta believe that Jallikattu, Tamil Nadu's bull-taming sport, should be banned on account of alleged cruelty to the animals, while its supporters say it is a tradition that should survive for a variety of reasons. Narayan Ramachandran in Mint weighs in with the pros and cons of the arguments.

Sunita Aron analyses in the Hindustan Times the implications of the Congress's alliance with the Samajwadi Party in Uttar Pradesh ahead of the assembly elections in the state. Looking at the history of alliances in the state, she concludes this one is not going to be easy, "for the simple reason that the SP was founded on Lohia's anti-Congress principles and also because of trust deficit".

New Delhi should use creative diplomacy to persuade Myanmar to resolve the Rohingya crisis, writes Happymon Jacob in The Hindu. "It should perhaps consider appointing a special envoy for this purpose who should hold discreet negotiations with Myanmar's military, [Aung San] Suu Kyi, Dhaka and Beijing in order to bring an end to the crisis," he says.

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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.