Here are some important reports from the biggest newspapers of India
1. Questions over dead man's 'potency' delay gangrape trial
The verdict in the gangrape of a Danish tourist in Delhi has been held up by a peculiar request — the court-appointed lawyer of one of the nine accused, now dead, wants him declared impotent and, thereby, innocent.
The state had withdrawn the case against Shyam Lal after his death. But his lawyer, Dinesh Sharma, is insistent that the court recall witnesses to testify on a medical report stating that the 55-year-old was impotent. Additional sessions judge Rakesh Kumar will now hear an application filed by Sharma on March 8, the Hindustan Times reported.
2. You are wasting public money, government tells PSU bank bosses
The government has read the riot act to chiefs of state-run banks, asking them to shape up and take decisive action to rework the public sector banking landscape, which accounts for nearly 70% of the financial market.
During a closed-door meeting at Gyan Sangam, an an nual retreat to strategise, minister of state for finance Jayant Sinha on Friday accused bank bosses of sitting in their “ivory towers“ and not even reassuring their employees at a time when the state-run lenders were going through the most difficult time in over a decade, the Times of India reported.
The message was the sternest in recent months and came after a series of steps -from reworking the appointments process to a recapitalisation roadmap -have had little impact so far.
3. Ice-cream vendors to get smart cards
The New Delhi Municipal Council has launched a special drive to issue smart cards to street vendors in New Delhi. Ice-cream vendors will be the first to get such cards.
The council aims to regulate the activities of vendors and check related traffic nuisance at public parks, markets, commercial places and footpaths, the Hindustan Times reported.
4. Rohith-Kanhaiya link irks BJP as it brushes caste under the flag
When JNUSU president Kanhaiya Kumar spoke of caste inequality and called Rohith Vemula his "icon" after his release on bail for sedition, he didn't have to connect the dots for his audience.
Kanhaiya's arrest in JNU came just short of a month after the Dalit student committed suicide in his room on the Hyderabad Central University campus. Like Kanhaiya, Rohith had also been labelled "anti-national" — for having demonstrated, under the banner of the Ambedkar Students Association (ASA), against the death penalty to Yakub Memon. The ABVP's fingerprints are visible in both episodes — it invited the government into its face-off with the ASA, even as it first raised the flag, or alarm, over the February 9 meeting in JNU, the Indian Express reported.
5. Jat violence like 1984 riots: Sukhbir Badal
Punjab deputy chief minister Sukhbir Badal has compared the recent violence for Jat reservation in Haryana to the 1984 anti-Sikh riots. In an exclusive interview to the Times of India, he has also said that such riots have continued in the country because the perpetrators of the 1984 violence were not booked and given exemplary punishment. He even hinted that the Haryana government was not doing enough.
Punjab Congress chief Amarinder Singh had recently commented that non Jats, especially Punjabis, were targeted during the violence in Haryana and Shiromani Akali Dal had remained a mute spectator.
6. Soon, Stanford University quality check for desi engineers
The government wants to run a quality check on engineering students to sharpen their skills before they graduate.
The human resource development ministry is engaging Stanford University to design a capsule test to measure learning outcomes of engineering students, the Hindustan Times reported. The test is likely to be introduced by the end of this year.
7. Exam centre 15km away, victim’s kin says girl will be traumatised again
"My daughter cannot take the examinations," said Nalanda rape victims’ father as he fished out her admit card that had arrived on Saturday morning.
"Her exam centre is Sohsarai Kisan College which is 15 kilometres away. Do they expect me to go there with my daughter and make a tamasha (spectacle) of her with 10 police guards following us… How would the boys…? What will I do of the catcalls and teasing?... She (my daughter) will forget whatever she studied,” he told the Hindustan Times reported.
8. Bags, pens & T-shirts to swing Bengal voters
Gone are the days when candidates banked on door-to-door campaigning or mass rallies to reach out to the electorate. With the announcement of the Bengal polls on Friday, Trinamool Congress candidates are raring to go all out to woo voters. Many of the veteran politicians and heavyweights have already made a pitch to come up with innovative poll memorabilia, from umbrellas to pocket calendars and T-shirts to name a few.
Trying to limit the expenditure within the allocation limit set by the EC, Chandrima Bhattacharyya, who is contesting from North Dumdum, may place an order for umbrellas with the TMC emblem and her name on it, the Times of India reported.
9. Only two state-run buses for every 10 lakh people in Bihar
For every 10 lakh people in Bihar, on average just two governmentrun buses were available in 2014-15. In Odisha 11, and in West Bengal 22, such buses were available for a million people. This is the reality, even as governments have repeatedly vowed to improve public transport so that it is within reach of the last man in a village.
There are some states which have bucked the trend -Karnataka, Tamil Nadu and Himachal Pardesh. They have more government buses serving people and reaching out to far-off villages where private players are scarce since these are loss making routes.
10. Pakistan man, 'missing' since 2007 Samjhauta blasts, set to leave Punjab jail
Eight years after Pakistani national Muhammad Irfan was recorded as "missing" in the wake of the 2007 Samjhauta Express bombings, he may be released from Amritsar Central Jail. Pakistani officials visited his family, settled in Sargodha district of Pakistan Punjab, last Tuesday seeking details to ascertain his identity to secure his release in India.
According to the Indian Express, a diploma student in computer hardware, Muhammad Irfan, then 28, had come to New Delhi for some purchases in connection with his studies. He had boarded the Samjhauta Express to go back, travelling on ticket number 391734 from Delhi to Attari, when blasts had ripped through the train on the intervening night of February 18-19, 2007, leaving 69 dead.
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