A complete no brainer. If the loan is a shorter period of time, your overall interest will go down.
If you take a home loan and the down payment is low then your principal amount is high. So if you can arrange more and more down payments from your friends and relatives then your EMI will come down. So if you can arrange more and more down payment from your friends and relative then your EMI will come down.
Every year you get a salary hike or your business is booming then you can pay more EMI than previous year, most probably. So it's better that you revise your EMI one every year. This will save your money.
You got a bonus? A huge one this year? This can be another opportunity to save interest. Did you get a bonus? a sum of money then it will reduce your principal amount.
Credit Score, by CIBIL or other agency, act as a parameter for lenders/bank to understand how you deal with borrowed money. A score of 750 and above is considered good. Below this can increase the interest rate across the banks. So you better be careful with the money you borrow.
Last year the interest rates for home loan in India was down and it has been hiked recently. In future it may be down again. Fixed interest rate will not let you take benefit of downtrend in interest rate. But a floating interest rate will.