News on Agra & Current Affairs

VISHAL SHARMA AGRA. With the growing sense of trust between India and Pakistan after the mutual Confidence Building Measures (CBM), the industrialists of these two countries are also seeking mutual partnerships in cross-border business. To take the advantage of this hopefully “lasting peace” between the two countries, a 27 member delegation of the National Chamber of Industries and Commerce, UP (NCIC) shall be shortly leaving for Pakistan in search of new business prospects in the country upon the invitation of the Lahore Chamber of Commerce & Industries (LCCI). Talking to Business Standard on Wednesday, NCIC president Rajiv Gupta said that the NCIC had assembled a delegation of 27 top industrialists of Agra and Firozabad, concerned with the foundry, glass, leather, handicrafts & automobile industry, who were interested in either resuming their earlier business contacts in Pakistan or making fresh deals. This delegation shall leave for Pakistan in the 3...

VIJAY UPADHYAY AGRA. When the Mughal emperors entered India, the first architectural change that they introduced in the country was the strategic placement of their residences and other important buildings around the multitude of water bodies present in Northern India in order to fight off the high temperatures of the Indian plains. Historic evidence indicates the presence of over 100 such water bodies including ponds, moats and streams in the Mughal era Agra, which continued to remain in existence decades after the British rule ended but with the growing urbanization of this town, these water bodies have completely disappeared in just the past one decade. With the Yamuna river dried out and the ponds being filled up, Agra has come close to a complete ecological disaster. Each year, underground water is becoming saline and the levels are dropping with the daytime temperature reaching the 50 degree mark. Now, to protect the environment of this town which had come close to being conve...

Vijay Upadhyay Agra. He first entered into an extra-marital relationship and when his wife got a whiff of this, this man did not hesitate to hire a contract killer to eliminate his entire family. This may seem like a film plot but this heinous crime actually took place in Agra on Monday night when a local property dealer got his family murdered including his young wife and two kids aged four and seven. Faced with charges of quadruple murder, Sunderlal, a resident of Sikandra in Agra, claims it was his wife who had illicit relations with his cousin Rajvir whose dead body was also found on the railway tracks along with the badly mangled bodies of his wife and children on Tuesday morning. He claims Pinki, his wife, had run away from home late on Monday evening and committed suicide on the same night with her "lover" Rajvir along with both his kids too. However, the Agra Police tells a different story. According to Sikandra police station incharge Abhay Singh, the police h...

VISHAL SHARMA AGRA. After years of lagging behind in the foreign trade and collaboration segment, the ailing footwear industry of Agra is finally set to make a turnaround with Italian footwear component companies showing interest in the “Footwear Components Park” that is being setup in Agra by the Council of Leather Exports, Govt. of India, with the cost of over Rs. 16 crores. A nine member delegation of Italian Footwear components manufacturers met the Agra Footwear Manufacturers and Exporters Chamber (AFMEC) officials on Wednesday in Hotel Holiday Inn to discuss the possibilities of securing space in the Agra footwear park for Italian companies that are interested in setting up units in footwear manufacturing units in India. Talking to Business Standard, Puran Dawar, Managing partner of Dawar Footwear Industries and Chairman & Managing Director of Agra Footwear Infrastructure Development Company that is engaged in the construction of the park on Agra-Del...

VIJAY UPADHYAY AGRA. Gone are the days when a movie scoring a hit in Uttar Pradesh made it a blockbuster and the Hindi movie industry thrived on the “house full” boards that had become an almost permanent feature of the UP theatres two decades back. Now, with the viewers becoming tied to the tube at home, this 100 year journey from a Biscope to the massive 70 mm screen seems to be coming to an end with 250 movie theatres drawing their curtains in this state in the past few years for the lack of viewers and about 100 to shut down shortly, giving way to a new generation of multiplexes.In a state which flaunts its large Hindi speaking population as its “resource” and whose “ambassadors” in the Bollywood movie world are mega stars like Amitabh Bachchan & Raj Babbar with well known actress of yesteryears Jaya Bachchan heading the UP Film Development Council, the number of film goers in Uttar Pradesh is rapidly declining each year posing a threat to the Mumbai film industry itself ...