News on Agra & Current Affairs

Vishal Sharma   Domestic traders are opposing the 12.5 per cent VAT imposed on leather footwear.    New Delhi/Agra        Even as the footwear exporters of Agra are rejoicing at possible Italian investment in the leather footwear sector of the town, domestic footwear traders in Agra have gone on an indefinite strike from Tuesday against the 12.5 percent value added tax (VAT) proposed by the Uttar Pradesh government on leather footwear.   The strike, which encompasses almost 650 different bulk traders of footwear in the Shoe Market of Agra, is expected to cause a loss of about Rs 1 crore per day to the town's footwear trade while seriously affecting the manufacturer-trader supply chain that thrives on the daily sale volumes.   According to Rajkumar Sama, president, Agra Shoe Factors Federation (ASFF), a recent decision by the state government to bring VAT into effect in the state from December 1 has shocked the footwear industry of the town, which caters to almost 8

VISHAL SHARMA New Delhi/ Agra.                        Having failed to draw the UP government's attention towards the pending development projects worth around Rs 60 crore for manufacturing footwear components, the Agra footwear industry is now looking at collaborating with the local foundry industry to develop ancillary units for manufacturing components like rivets, buckles, and sole dies most of which are currently imported at high cost.   Talking to Business Standard, Haji Rasheedo, owner of a small-scale footwear manufacturing unit in the Mantola area of the town, said currently the sole-dies had to be imported from China as attempts to produce quality sole-dies locally had not succeeded till date.   He said some footwear sole manufacturers, who were unable to import the sole-dies from China, were buying them from some selected die manufacturers in Mumbai. But either way, the cost of importing a die was so high that changing sole patterns frequently could not b

VISHAL SHARMA New Delhi/ Agra.         At a time when the bicycle industry of the country is growing at almost 10 per cent annually, the export of Indian bicycles has dropped to almost half the previous year's tally owing to a huge increase in steel prices in the past three months and an unstable dollar.   For the industry that exports almost Rs 1,000 crore worth of its production, the rising steel prices have caused a tremendous drop in exports, which are presently pegged at just around Rs 423 crore.   The bicycle manufacturers of the country held a bicycle trade fair in Agra last week. The spokesperson of the United Cycle & Parts Manufacturers Association, KK Seth, said the production of steel was being monopolised by a select group of companies in India who were manipulating steel prices.   In the past three months, the steel prices had shot up by Rs 3,000 per metric tonne and now the companies were again preparing to raise prices citing international market

VISHAL SHARMA New Delhi/ Agra.                      Disposing of solid waste is fast becoming an unmanageable problem in Agra, with the municipal trenching grounds overflowing with tonnes of urban waste generated every day.    And seeing the opportunity and handsome profits in solid waste management, several companies have offered projects under the Jawaharlal Nehru National Urban Renewal Mission (JNNURM) to produce things like bio-fertilisers and electricity from this urban waste. The Agra Municipal Corporation is analysing some proposals.    Hydroair Tectonics (PCD) Pvt Ltd, a Mumbai-based environmental engineering company, has also jumped into the bandwagon, offering to develop a Rs 60-crore project in Agra that will transform urban waste into bricks, fertilisers and coal, while paying an annual licence fee of Rs 1 crore to the Agra Municipal Corporation.    Company representatives recently met Agra Mayor Anjula Singh Mahore, who gave her approval in principle for th

VISHAL SHARMA  New Delhi/ Agra                          Alarmed by slow growth in the production of milk in Uttar Pradesh, which has been stagnant at around 2.5 million litres per day for the past five years despite the increase in the number of cattle and dairies, the Uttar Pradesh government is now planning to launch a 'breeder farm' and 'dairy development' project in all the 820 developmental blocks of the state to develop new and better breeds of cattle to almost double the milk production in the coming decade.     The state's budgetary allocation for livestock and dairy will also be raised almost three times from Rs 550 crore this year to about Rs 1,500 crore in the next year for facilitating the implementation of the dairy development and breeder farm projects.    Talking to Business Standard about the project, Awadhpal Singh Yadav, minister of state (independent charge) for livestock and dairy said UP was one of the most important states in Ind

Vishal Sharma New Delhi/ Agra.                          The iron casting industry of Agra may have been losing on the technological front, but national industrial giants are slowly realising the huge untapped potential of the over 200 metal-casting and component manufacturing units of the town.     In a recent visit to the city's metal-casting and component-manufacturing units, RR Deshpande, Kirloskar Oil Engines Ltd indicated that the company may invite more participation from Agra-based casting units in the supply of casting products and diesel engine components in which the Agra units have been involved for decades, but without any technological advancements.    He said that KOEL, one of the leading manufacturers of engines, engine components, generating sets etc., was considering developing some of the units in Agra as its ancillary units by providing them technical assistance.    The products manufactured in these units could be picked up by KOEL, giving the A

Vishal Sharma New Delhi/ Agra.              Even as the Agra petha industry faces growing competition from the units being set up in other cities of UP like Lucknow and Kanpur by migrating petha workers of Agra, the UP Pollution Control Board (UPCCB) is coming down hard on the units functioning in Agra for not having adopted LPG-based stoves, threatening to seal down the units if they continued to use coal in their manufacturing process.     Talking to Business Standard, Ashok Kumar Tiwari, regional officer, UPPCB, said the petha manufacturers of Agra had been served notices recently to stop the use of coal in their stoves but most of the units continued to flout state government orders by stealthily receiving deliveries of coal at their premises in the night.    He said the Agra administration and UPPCB had banned the entry of coal trucks into the city and formed a four-member committee to oversee the relocation of these units into the petha cluster this month. A few t

Vishal Sharma New Delhi/ Agra.               At a time when the price of an entry-level air conditioner has come below Rs 10,000, Khaitan Electricals Ltd, currently having a 16 per cent share in the domestic fan market, has chalked out plans to introduce designer fans costing Rs 1 lakh by March next year.    According to company Vice-Chairman and Managing Director Sunil Khaitan, who was in Agra recently for a company meeting, though the mainstay of the company is still fan manufacturing, the company is also diversifying into manufacturing CFL lights, miniature circuit breakers, wires and home appliances.    The company's latest product in this range would be a pressure cooker that is expected to be introduced in the market by the month-end.    He said Khaitan Electricals Ltd had prepared a wide range of designer underlight fans in the 'Fantasy' line and the costliest fan in this range was currently tagged at Rs 10,000.    The company is now preparing for

Vishal Sharma New Delhi/ Agra. Mobile service providers in Agra are facing an acute problem. Agra is surrounded by hundreds of small villages and during the daytime most of the rural population flocks to the city for work. This has left the service providers in trouble as they are having a tough time in providing flawless service during the day because of the congestion in the network towers in the city. Whereas the rural call traffic drops to nearly 30 per cent during this time. Taking this into consideration, Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd has decided to raise the call handling capacity of its towers in the urban areas by two times, while adding another 50 towers in the areas facing the highest call congestion. According to Rajesh Kumar, deputy general manager (Mobiles), BSNL, the company currently has 124 towers in the city, serving about 150,000 subscribers while the total call handling capacity available with BSNL in the city is only for around 140,000 subscribers. This

Vishal Sharma CONSERVATION: Hopefully, there'll be a "whiter" Taj Mahal by next year. NEW DELHI. With its place among the seven wonders of the world, reconfirmed so spectacularly, it’s time to turn to the conservation of the Taj Mahal. Environmentalists have often expressed concern at the monument’s white marble becoming “yellow” owing to the acidic reaction of the soft marble surface with the polluted air. After much debate, the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI) had proposed using a mud-pack made “Multani Mitti” (fuller’s earth, a natural bleaching agent) on the monument’s main dome and arches to give it a face-lift. Finally, a proposal to this effect was submitted for approval to ASI headquarters this week. The entire process, which could last six months, will cost about Rs 28 lakh. S K Samadhiya, deputy superintending archaeological chemist, ASI, says the ASI’s chemical branch has submitted a proposal for a step-by-step application of the mud-pack on the arches and

Vijay Upadhyay Agra. Medicine students often follow a monotonous routine of studying day in and day out for five years before they graduate. But an attempt to break this monotony in true 'Munnabhai style' cost three medical students dearly, when they were caught filming their sexual escapades with a call-girl they had called into their hostel room at the Sarojini Naidu Medical College in Agra. The students were suspended from the college following the recommendations of an inquiry committee hastily setup by the college administration, but not before the irate docs released the 4-minute clip as an MMS, making it a hot-selling property in the local porn market. Talking to Sunday Pioneer, college principal NC Prajapati said three students of the 2001, 2002 and 2004 batches together with a medical graduate practicing elsewhere smuggled a callgirl into the college hostel in their car last Thursday. These students were caught red-handed by the college proctors upon the complaint of

VIJAY UPADHYAY Agra. A week after he was thrown down from the college building roof by seniors, Abdul Wahab, a second- year engineering student at the Anand Engineering College in Agra will now undergo a spinal surgery this week. Taking steps to identify the seniors who threw the student from the roof, the Agra police has asked the college administration to prepare photographic profiles of all its students in digital format, that can be shown to Abdul on a laptop to enable him to identify his assailants. On Thursday evening, the police picked up some college officials including the principal for interrogation, but they had to be released soon, in the face of strong pressure from local bureaucrats. Wahab, a resident of Meerut, had recently joined the B.Tech course at the college. When Abdul threatened to complain about this to the college director, he was thrown off the third floor and left to die on the ground. Some college students who were passing that way got him adm

Vijay Upadhyay Agra. Seven hundred delegates of the Commonwealth Parliamentary Conference visited Agra for sight seeing on Saturday. The visit followed the conclusion of the 53rd Commonwealth Parliamentary Conference in New Delhi on Friday. The delegation reached Agra Cantonment Railway Station in the morning by a special Shatabdi train where they were received by the speaker of the Uttar Pradesh Vidhan Sabha, the Chairman of UP Vidhan Parishad and Opposition leader of UP Vidhan Sabha. On reaching, a long cavalcade of luxury buses specially arranged by the Agra administration, left for a visit of the three world heritage monuments of Agra, which, incidentally, remained closed for public throughout the day as an additional security measure for the Parliamentarians. The Agra Cantonment Railway Station also remained closed for general traffic through most of the day and passengers preferred to board their trains from other stations. Routes leading to the Taj Mahal and ot

Vijay Upadhyay Agra. Barely a month after violence rocked Agra, communal tension sparked again in the town on Saturday after a mob stopped the recital of Akhand Ramayan at a local temple that has been going on continuously for a record 13 years here. The violence that sparked off by the alleged man-handling of the temple priest by a local ex-corporator who led the mob, injured six, including the DSP Achhnera Aseem Chowdhary. One person was injured in police firing. Agra SSP Naveen Arora said the temple at station road broadcast the recital on a speaker system installed on a tree just outside, attracting hundreds of devotees.

Vishal Sharma New Delhi/ Agra Less than a week after the Agra Cantonment Board installed its own entry tax barriers on the roads leading to the Taj Mahal and other monuments, the Agra district administration has put a firm ban on the new tax, claiming it was creating nuisance in the city and endangering the Taj Mahal from the pollution created by the vehicles crowding at the toll-tax barriers, just a couple of kilometres away from the monument. According to Agra District Magistrate Mukesh Kumar Meshram, the toll tax barriers installed by the cantonment board on September 20 were close to the Taj Mahal and were creating chaos on roads leading to the monument. This was also causing air pollution around the Taj, as was evident in a report submitted by the UP Pollution Control Board. Also, the entry tax was causing a serious law and order problem in the district because tax barriers were disturbing the normal passage of traffic through the city. Meshram said if th

Vishal Sharma New Delhi/ Agra Following a serious setback faced by the local tourism industry after the alleged rape of two Japanese tourists, Agra became the first city in Uttar Pradesh to implement the concept of a “Tourism Police Station” on Tuesday. To be established and operated at almost Rs 7 crore per year and manned by 114 police and tourism department personnel, the police station will be permanently established close to the Taj Mahal in a couple of months. Talking to Business Standard on the occasion, Parthsarthy Sen Sharma, director general (tourism), UP, said the toll-tax paid by tourists arriving at the Taj Mahal would finance the operational costs of such a large contingent of personnel deployed throughout Agra district for the protection of the tourists. Notably, the Taj Mahal alone earns more than Rs 60 crore from toll-tax each year and it is spent in the maintenance of tourism infrastructure around the major monuments of the city. He said such incidents badly damaged

Vishal Sharma New Delhi/ Agra Though the UP government has approved the proposal of increasing the capacity of the Anpara C power project from 1,000 Mw to 1,200 Mw, subject to Lanco Anpara Power Pvt Ltd getting requisite clearances, there’s confusion still in the power ministry about the increased capacity. This is evident from a recent judgment by the UP Electricity Regulatory Commission (UPERC) in which it asked the UP Power Corporation Ltd to reconsider the upgrade of this project in view of the infrastructural problems that would arise in supporting the raised capacity. Meanwhile, a highly placed source in the UP Power Corporation Ltd said though the increase in capacity for Anpara C had been approved [vide UP Rajya Vidyut Utpadan Nigam Ltd (UPRVUNL) letter no. 2351/CE/PPMM/Anpara C dated 22/8/2007], LANCO Anpara Power Pvt Ltd still had to obtain the requisite permissions and clearances for the raised capacity before the 20 per cent increase was declared offic

Vijay Upadhyay Agra. The Taj Mahal is probably the only historical building in the world which attracts an inestimable number of disputes every year. Shortly after historians raised objections on the use of mud pack on the monument for its cleaning, a descendant of the last Mughal Emperor Bahadurshah Zafar has filed a suit in an Agra court against the Archaeological Survey of India for promoting numerous self-styled committees for holding 'Urs' of Shahjahan at the Taj. The descendant claims that Shahjahan was not a 'sufi saint' and he had not left any indications in his will for such a grand annual Urs to be held at his tomb. Condemning the interference of numerous 'self-styled' Urs committees at the Taj, Prince Yakub Habibuddin Tucy, who purports to be the great grandson of the last Mughal Emperor Bahadur Shah Zafar, has requested the court to pass an immediate injunction against such committees, claiming that these committees and their office-bearers ar

Vishal Sharma New Delhi/ Agra. Despite Agra being a major hub of footwear, engineering products, glass and handicraft industries, the exporters of the town often face problems in transporting their products from Agra to the port in Mumbai due to the shortage of the number of container trains passing through Agra, often resulting in undue delays in the shipping of consignments. Taking note of this problem, Container Corporation of India Ltd. (CONCOR) has now agreed to operate another container train for the town’s exporters, while also relenting on providing a number of other concessions to new exporters. Discussing the issue with the exporters in Agra on Wednesday, Deepak Kapoor, chief general manager, CONCOR, said the corporation was ready to run another container train for Agra by the first week of October, provided there was enough business generated from the town. He said CONCOR was also ready to extend a pre-deposit account facility to new exporters of the town in which

Vishal Sharma New Delhi. Following a ban on diesel engine manufacture in Agra by the Central Pollution Control Board (CPCB), the diesel engine and generator manufacturing industry has come to a virtual standstill. Though most of the diesel engine manufacturers have either downed their shutters or have begun selling unassembled engines and generators, a few of the major engine manufacturers of the town have taken a step further, developing new technologies and making their engines compliant to the CPCB standards. BS Agricultural Industries recently announced the development of a completely new engine technology, which, besides being compliant with CPCB standards, also heavily economises on fuel consumption. Talking to Business Standard on this new engine, Narinder Singh, director, BS Agricultural Industries, said that the new engine had been developed by the company's own Research & Development unit and it was displaying a fuel-economy of up to 40 per cent less than the engines

Vishal Sharma New Delhi/ Agra Even though the footwear industry in Agra has been growing at an unprecedented rate, industry analysts believe this growth rate will be short-lived, considering the acute shortage of trained labour for footwear manufacture that the industry is facing presently. There are close to 75 export-oriented footwear units currently in Agra and most of these units are facing similar problems - shortage of quality leather, lack of export facilities, unavailability of a footwear design studio and the overwhelming problem of the lack of adequate numbers of trained labour. According to the Agra Footwear Manufacturers and Exporters Chamber (AFMEC) sources, while most of the operational problems could be sorted out with ease, it was the shortage of atleast 15000 trained labourers within the current year for the export oriented units, that would ultimately pull the Agra footwear units back from the developmental track. Blaming the footwear training institutes and

Vishal Sharma Agra Agra’s foundry industry, one of the oldest industrial clusters of the country, is dying a slow death. High costs of production, technology change and a stiff competition from big foundries is marring growth of these units, leading to their gradual phase-out. Today, there are just 200-250 foundry units functioning in the city and its industrial areas. Out of these, close to 100 are defunct due to their inability to shift to the CNG-based manufacturing process. The rest are struggling hard to make ends meet because of the high manufacturing costs required for running CNG-based furnaces. Now, the UP Pollution Control Board (UPPCB) has decided to serve closure notices to over 30 foundry units for not complying with pollution norms. A UPPCB official said, “Though a lot of foundry units have shifted to CNG, still a large number of them emit poisonous gases and violate pollution norms.” He said that a survey of all foundry units had been conducted by the board

Vijay Upadhyay Agra. It was the biggest case of kidnapping in the criminal history of Etah district in UP that involved a ransom of Rs 3 crores but 18 days later, after having made the biggest blunder in solving the crime, Etah Police is only left with the victim's decomposed body and an escaped criminal. As the high-profile case of seed trader Sunit Chola's abduction came to a grisly yet sad climax with the recovery of his decomposed body from a 6 feet deep pit, Etah Police's modus operandi in handling this case has left a number of questions that remain unanswered. Chola, a seed trader in Kasganj, had been kidnapped by unknown goons on August 13, who had demanded Rs 1 crore cash and 2 kg gold on a phone call to the trader's family. The call, made from Chola's mobile, was tracked down and placed under electronic surveillance by the police, revealing that Chola could be located in the ravines of Fatehpur Kalan, about 25 km away from Kasganj. Though the investigatio

Vishal Sharma New Delhi/ Agra At a time when the tourist traffic began to show upward trend in Agra, Wednesday’s communal riot, that broke in morning, has acted as a deterrent, thus crushing down the hopes of tourism industry of having a good year ahead. With the blocking of Mahatma Gandhi road, which leads to the city, due to curfew in six police station areas, the tourist traffic into the town remained disrupted throughout the day and a number of package tours, due to arrive in Agra, are reported to have cancelled their plans following the news of the riots. Talking to Business Standard, Prahlad Agarwal, convener, Agra Foreign Tourist Traders & Exporters Association said the tourism business was highly sensitive and slightest disruption of peace in the city dissuaded the tourists from visiting a place. He said each day’s disruption in tourist traffic could cause a loss worth Rs 1crore-1.5 crore to the tourism industry in the city. He said they had been receiving

GLOBETROTTING Vishal Sharma New Delhi/ Agra Taking steps to cater to the leather footwear demands in the South American countries, the Council for Leather Exports (CLE) has announced the opening of Leather Desk in the city of Nova Hamburgo, Brazil, to facilitate Indian leather companies to do business with Brazilian firms and expand into new markets. CLE sources at Agra said Nova Hamburgo is the leather footwear production hub and among the leaders in exports to the world. CLE, in an attempt to boost up its members, has opened this desk where companies can get an open platform to expand their business. Agra, being the hub of Indian leather sector, the desk is also a stage for the town's exporters to grab orders from the untapped western markets. Speaking about the new initiative, Mukhtarul Amin, chairman, Council for Leather Exports, said: "This is a wonderful opportunity for footwear manufacturers at Agra. Unless we look at expanding our horizon to include new ma

Vishal Sharma New Delhi/ Agra Taking steps to minimise power theft by industrial consumers in Agra, UP power distribution company Dakshinanchal Vidyut Vitran Nigam Ltd (DVVNL) has developed a wireless automated meter reading (AMR) system, which could make the process of manual meter reading redundant. Developing a wireless solution by working in collaboration with Jaipur-based Genus Power Infrastructure Ltd (GPIL), DVVNL has begun the installation of wireless power meters at the premises of its industrial consumers that was expected to bring down both the meter reading costs and power thefts drastically. Talking to Business Standard, DVVNL Managing Director Kirpal Singh said that though cases of power thefts were found more in domestic consumers, the real loss of revenue was still due to power theft in industrial units where the discom crew could not easily enter to check the meters, and by the time they reached the place where the meter was installed, the evidence of me

Vishal Sharma Agra State administration tells manufacturers to shift to gas burners or face closure. For a prospering industrial cluster of nearly 500 units, relocation is one of the worst nightmares. The petha manufacturers of Agra are facing exactly that prospect after having been served a month’s notice to either move to the new petha cluster established outside the city or face complete shutdown. At a meeting of petha manufacturers, Green Gas Ltd, a joint venture between GAIL (India) Ltd and IOC Ltd, the UP Pollution Control Board and city municipal officials held recently, it was decided that the Noori Gate area, which has been the hub of petha manufacturing units in Agra, will be vacated in a month and the units shifted to the Agra Development Authority’s petha cluster outside the city. “The petha units were causing a serious two-pronged pollution problem inside the city. The units released several tonnes of organic waste and smoke every day,” said Ashok Kumar Tiwari, regional o

Vishal Sharma New Delhi/ Agra After losing its chance of being turned into an international airport, Agra has again suffered a major setback with the union aviation ministry deciding to “overfly” the city’s airport while offering Lucknow a chance to share the winter flight load of the fogged-down Delhi airport. Each year during the winters, the international airport at Delhi gets covered with fog making it hard to land flights there for several days in the season. Flights approaching Delhi during these bad conditions are often routed to nearby airports of like Jaipur, Lucknow and Ahmedabad. The larger aircraft have to be diverted to Mumbai as other airports have smaller runways unfit to land large aircraft. Some of these aircraft are also landed at Agra, which is barely 15 minutes away from Delhi. Sources claimed that as it was a part of the Agra air force base, the runways available at the Agra airport were sufficient to land even the largest of aircrafts and advanced instrumental lan

Vishal Sharma New Delhi/ Agra Ever since it was established, the glass industry of Firozabad, a small industrial town close to Agra, has hardly seen technological changes apart some shifting from wood-fired furnaces to natural gas. Glass units depend on manual glass blowing and manufacturing techniques, which cannot ensure consistency in quality and increases costs. This has been the primary reason for the glass industry of this town failing to compete with products from China. As a step towards reducing costs, the Centre for the Improvement of Glass Industry, operated by the Union Ministry of Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises, has introduced new technology in pot furnace manufacture in the town recently. This incorporates multiple chambers developed under a glass industry development project initiated by the Centre’s Department of Science & Technology, instead of the usual furnace design using a single chamber. According to industry sources, the centre has been holding demonstr

Vishal Sharma New Delhi/ Agra The minimum consumption guarantee dispute between the GAIL (India) Ltd and Agra industrialists has taken a serious turn. Taking steps to recover its dues worth Rs 7 crore, GAIL has served dues recovery and disconnection notices to the foundry units of Agra, demanding the payment of all dues according to the minimum guarantee agreement signed by the foundry units. Cornered by GAIL’s threats to shut down gas supply to the units, foundry unit owners of Agra and Firozabad recently held a meeting at the National Chamber of Industries & Commerce (UP) in which they decided to raise this issue before the Union petroleum ministry in Delhi on July 24. They decided to demand a waiver of the minimum guarantee due to the low consumption of natural gas in the foundry units in the absence of modern cupola furnaces. The industrialists have also decided to demand an increase in the gas quota of Agra and Firozabad from 1.1 million metric standard cubic metres per day (

It is a 25-km death zone where even cops don't venture. Routinely, dead bodies are seen hanging from acacia trees and the area is littered with human bones. Victims are rarely identified and never ever recovered alive. Averaging 25 bodies a year, this stretch has gained unprecedented notoriety, reports Vijay Upadhyay In February 2006, bodies of a love couple were found hanging from two trees a few meters apart. As no suicide note was found, their death was termed an "honour killing by their families". The bodies had been stripped and were so decomposed that they could not be identified. This, however, was not the first time that bodies were found hanging from trees in a small stretch of forested land which is commonly known as Agra's Zone of Death. A 25-km strip of Acacia trees located on the border of Agra and the adjoining district of Hathras has gained strange notoriety. The reason? The forest is full of dead bodies and no policeman dares to enter these ravines to

Vishal Sharma / New Delhi/ Agra SME s of Agra have for long been lagging in the world markets due to their lack of credibility among the international clients, and this factor alone plays the biggest role in the low international business volume generated by local SMEs. As a solution, the National Chamber of Industries & Commerce, UP, has now sought the help of the SME Ratings Agency of India Ltd (SMERA) to assist Agra industrialists in obtaining registration with Dun & Bradstreet (D&B) to help local SMEs gain international credibility. This will be through a nine-digit “D-U-N-S” number, which is a unique identifier sequence for every business worldwide. A meeting of the SMERA and chamber officials was held in Agra recently, where the agency stressed the need for SMEs obtaining both ratings from the SMERA and D&B to help them do business in both domestic as well as international markets. According to SMERA officials, obtaining an SMERA rating was the first step for the

Vishal Sharma / New Delhi/ Agra W ith the opening of the Agra-Mumbai highway following the ceasefire in the Gujjar crisis in Rajasthan, the leather footwear and accessories industry of Agra can heave a sigh of relief. Trucks of raw material have finally begun pouring into the city, after almost a week, carrying quality leather from Chennai just in time to prevent a leather crisis in the town. However, the marble handicraft and carpet manufacturers of the town are still faced with uncertainty with the supply routes for marble and dyed wool from Rajasthan remaining blocked and the local stocks of raw material depleting fast. According to industry sources, the entire supply of marble in Agra for handicrafts and souvenirs came from Makrana and its nearby mines in Rajasthan. Owing to the precarious situation in Rajasthan over the Gujjar reservation issue, the supply of fresh stone had come to an abrupt halt with no indications about the possible resumption of supplies in near future, result

Vishal Sharma / New Delhi/ Agra E leven months after its formal announcement by the Union Ministry of Commerce, Parshvanath Developers is gearing up to submit the proposal for the leather and allied products SEZ to the ministry before the June 25 deadline. According to the company sources, the proposal was almost ready and it shall be submitted before the deadline to ensure that the funds set aside for the SEZ did not lapse. Sources claimed that since the Agra project was a sector-specific SEZ, it only required 250 acres of land which could be arranged on the Agra-Mathura highway. Notably, the sector-specific SEZ for leather and allied products had been announced last year by the Union Minister of State for Commerce Jairam Ramesh and the project had been handed over to Parshavnath developers for construction. Since then, the local industrialists had been expressing their apprehensions on the delay being caused by the company in marking the SEZ land and submitting the project report bef

Vishal Sharma New Delhi/ Agra At a time when all major integrated township projects launched during the past couple of years in Uttar Pradesh are being re-examined, Ansal Properties & Infrastructure Ltd announced the launch of its project Sushant Taj City, in Agra on Wednesday. At the launch ceremony, Sushil Ansal, Chairman, Ansal API, said the housing project was located on the Agra-Delhi national highway on the Agra ring road. Spread over 460 acres, he said, the project would have close to 3,000 dwelling units, of which about 1,200 would be independent villas, making it one of the biggest township projects in Agra. According to Ansal, the Sushant Taj City shall have all modern amenities like educational institutions, clubs etc, surrounded by about 75 acres of greenery. He said that the company was in process of tying up with some leading hospital chains to develop a modern multi-specialty hospital in the township. Also, the development of a star-category hotel was also on the ca

Vishal Sharma New Delhi/ Agra JP Cement, one of the major cement brands in the Agra region, is now planning to increase its market share which is currently pegged at 30 per cent. Jaiprakash Associates Ltd Vice-President Prem Prakash said after the recent acquisition of three plants from UP State Cement Corporation Ltd, the cement production capacity of the company had increased by 2.2 million tonne in Uttar Pradesh and the state was being surveyed to market this surplus production. He said at present the company was producing about 7 million tonne of cement every year and the projected target for 2010 was 20 million tonne for which the company would increase its production capacity by new acquisitions and by building larger cement plants. According to Prakash, in the Agra region, where Jaypee group had launched its cement brands in October last year, the company saw a lot of potential and expected the market share to grow significantly within three years with the increased supply of c

Vijay Upadhyay Agra The Braj region of Uttar Pradesh, comprising of Agra, Mathura and some parts of Rajasthan, brimming with milk and milk products, has been known as the land of cows since the era of Lord Krishna. Most influential politicians here are also associated with the milk business, earning several crores each year through this trade . But with the number of dairy cattle dying each year because of the unavailability of green fodder, affecting the milk production, the region is now forced to import milk from Gujarat, the land where Lord Krishna reigned in his last years . Cashing in on the milk crisis in the Braj region, Gujarat Cooperative Milk Marketing Federation (GCMMF), marketing its milk with the renowned brand name Amul, entered the Agra region last week, in a tie-up with Kwality Dairy India Pvt Ltd. Arriving raw from the Sabar dairy, run by the Sabarkantha District Milk Producers Union functioning under GCMMF, the milk will be soon made available in the entire Northern

Better known as the ancestral village of former Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee, Bateshwar near Agra was once home to over a 100 temples. But today, a few remain with most of them getting destroyed due to floods. Vijay Upadhyay reports on a town that lives and draws from its rich past Once known as the village of 101 temples, Bateshwar in Agra has lost this identity to time. Now, better known as the ancestral village of former Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee, out of the 400-year-old series of 101 temples, barely 48 remain standing owing to the three great floods that wrecked majority of these temples. The rest of the temples are likely to have disastrous effects if yet another flood hits the Yamuna in the near future. Situated on the bank of the river Yamuna, about 75 km away from Agra, Bateshwar also marks the important site of the conjunction of the Yamuna with the Chambal, filling up the Yamuna yet again with water which then carries on to Allahabad, finally merging into t