How silly of me, I found the following from Nicholas' emails: Dhavan, please see my reply to David Krauser for #2 (Policy compliance). For #4 see ยง "COMPATIBILITY LEVELS" of debhelper(7) (man debhelper). If you have any questions after reading those, please don't hesitate to ask. (eg: if a versioned dep is still required, or if it's ok to drop the version at this time).
-- D Vaidya