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I stumbled upon the following problem during my research.

I have a bipartite graph, and I want to determine the minimum number of edges to to remove so that the maximum path length in the resulting graph is 2.

Is this problem NP-hard? I was trying to come up with a polynomial time algorithm (and failed) and also tried to prove its NP-hardness, but also having a hard time.

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Figured out this is indeed NP-hard. This is equivalent to finding the maximum spanning star forest in a bipartite graph, which in turn is as hard as finding the minimum dominating set in a bipartite graph, which is NP-hard.

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    $\begingroup$ Did you by any chance created two accounts? If yes please follow this. Could you elaborate your answer? $\endgroup$
    – Evil
    Apr 13, 2016 at 0:24

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