News on Agra & Current Affairs

Vijay Upadhyay Agra. Agra is known to be the only city in the world with three world heritage monuments. But apart from these three monuments, there are over 50 lesser known monuments that are maintained and conserved by the Archaeological Survey of India by posting their staff on these monuments . For long, ASI officials were feeling the need for a centralised setup for communicating with its staffer posted at various monuments of the city, including monuments like Fatehpur Sikri that are located even out of mobile coverage area. Arriving on a solution to this problem, the ASI has now linked all the Agra monuments with a centralised wireless radio communication network that was formally tested at the Taj Mahal on Saturday, linking the ASI office at Fatehpur Sikri, about 30 km away from the city. According to Superintending Archaeologist at Agra D Dayalan initially the Taj Mahal, Agra Fort, Fatehpur Sikri, Itmad-ud-Daullah and Sikandra have been connected with t...

Students preparing for a competitive or a professional exam often burn the midnight oil but Agra's Institute of Engineering technology has added a unique feather to its cap by conducting all examinations at midnight, says Vijay Upadhyay We have all heard of marathon teaching sessions running through the night, held by aspiring tutors who wish to create new, yet whimsical records. But an engineering institute in Agra seems to have broken all records by holding all its examinations at midnight and that too, sometimes without electricity. In a most interesting development in the already awry examination schedule of the university, the examinations for BTech. students in the Institute of Engineering Technology at the Khandari campus of the Agra University have been whimsically rescheduled by the University to be held at 9 pm in the night with the examination often getting delayed in the absence of question papers. But the worst hit are the BTech. (Part - Time) students whose examinatio...

Vishal Sharma New Delhi/ Agra. The UP government’s decision to facilitate the entry of new entrepreneurs in the state through various offers has received considerable applause from the Agra trade bodies, including the National Chamber of Industries and Commerce. However, industrialists have expressed concern at the fact that industrial growth in Uttar Pradesh is being seriously affected by political instability in the state. Notably, the UP cabinet has decided to offer up to 200 per cent financial assistance and perks to the entrepreneurs expressing an interest to invest over Rs 100 crore in the state. Expressing the views of the NCIC and other trade bodies of Agra, Anil Verma, president, NCIC, said that the UP traders had welcomed this step taken by the state government but it was still a fact that this step could go in the same way as the UP Development Council that had managed to attract big industrialists like Reliance and Godrej to the state but when the Reliance Energy project g...

Vijay Upadhyay Agra. A childhood fantasy to experience the adventure of hanging with a noose around the neck after watching a neighbour commit suicide by hanging, cost a kid his life in Agra on Monday. According to Agra police sources, eight-year old Arun, the youngest son of Dinesh Chandra Sharma, a resident of Itmad-ud-Daullah was found hanging from a hook around the ceiling, with a noose made from his mother's saree in his neck at about 12 noon on Monday. By the time he was rushed to a nearby hospital, he had already died. According to the neighbours of Dinesh Sharma, a woman had committed suicide by hanging from the roof with her saree, a few weeks back and Arun had very closely watched the woman's body hanging from the ceiling before it was finally taken down by the police. Ever since the kid watched the dead body hanging from the hook, it became a part of his childhood games to hang his dolls from the ceiling with his mother's saree and watch t...

Vishal Sharma New Delhi/ Agra. Before the revised pollution control directives put the Agra diesel generator manufacturing industry off its track, the foundry industry of this town ranked among the country’s largest assemblies of metal casting industrial units, generating business of over Rs 6,000 crores. According to the Agra District Industrial Centre officials, there were 226 iron foundries and about 340 metal casting units functioning in Agra in the decade of 1990-2000. However, after the use of coking coal in the blast furnaces, utilised by these units, was banned by the Central Pollution Control Board, the foundry and metal-casting industry faced a serious setback and the number of industrial units reduced drastically. Amar Mittal, Chairman, Agra Iron Founders Association, said, “Despite being more than 100 years old, the Agra metal-casting and foundry industry had not yet received exposure in the global market.” According to Mittal, availability of cheap labour a...

Vijay Upadhyay Agra. When parents leave their child at school for the first time, they believe that their darling is in the safe hands of his teachers who will be his second family for the duration he is in school. But the parents' trust in schools was breached last week in Agra when the middle-aged brother of a school principal attempted to rape an eight-year-old girl student inside the school campus. Badly bruised from the rape attempt , the girl managed to escape the clutches of this monster by rushing into a neighbouring house. The police have now filed a case of attempted rape against the accused. According to Jagdish Chand, Inspector-in-charge, Sadar Police Station, on Tuesday, the residents of Pak Tola in Tajganj were startled to see a stark naked schoolgirl come running out of the local Luv-Kush convent school and seek shelter in a nearby house, where the women of the house. When the girl came out of the shock of this ordeal, she told the most horrifying t...

VIJAY UPADHYAY Agra. For a woman, her first child is a gift from God and a mother would do everything to protect and nurture the child in her womb. But when this Agra woman aborted her child to pursue her career, little did she know her husband would file an FIR against her. Enraged by the step taken by his wife Neelam (name changed), Sanjeev (name changed) filed an FIR against her for criminal conspiracy with her parents and terminating pregnancy. Speaking to the Pioneer, inspector in-charge of Sadar police station Dileep Mittal said that Sanjeev, a resident of Mumbai, had married Neelam from Agra six years ago. At that time, Neelam had just been appointed as guest relations officer at a five-star hotel. After marriage, Neelam moved to Mumbai for sometime and it was then that she learnt that she was expecting. Sanjeev complained that soon after Neelam knew of her pregnancy, she created a ruckus at his Mumbai house and demanded that she be sent back to her parent...

Vijay Upadhyay Agra. In what is being seen as one of the largest mass re-conversions held in Uttar Pradesh by the Hindu outfits in the recent times, at least 3500 christians re-embraced Hinduism in the Badaun district of the state on Sunday. According to Rajeshwar Singh, provincial head of Dharma Jagran Samiti (Braj Prant), the reconversion "Yajna" was held in the GB Pant college of Kachchla town of Badaun and was presided over by Rajya Sabha member Dileep Singh Judeo. According to the sources, apart from individuals coming back to Hinduism, there were over 80 complete families that shed Christian symbols and once again wore "Yagyopaveet" after their purification by taking a dip in the Ganga river. Addressing the gathering, Dileep Singh Judeo said that at least 10 lakh Hindus had been converted in North India by the Christian missionaries that were actively striving to increase their ranks by exploiting some weaknesses in the Hindu caste system....

Vijay Upadhyay Agra. Summer is here and it's vacation time. You think of visiting a water park to temporarily take a break from the scorching heat - and what do you get? You and your family land in a dangerous situation and what you expected would be a memorable experience turns out to be a nightmare. This is what happened at a water park in Agra on Sunday. A married woman was molested and her husband beaten up by drunken youngsters when he tried to stop them from forcibly dancing with his wife in the 'rain dance alley' of the amusement park. According to sources in the Agra Police, Dharmendra Sharma, a resident of the New Agra area had taken his family to a water park located on the Agra-Mathura highway on Sunday. Here they met a group of 30-40 youngsters, who were drinking beer and teasing young girls at the park. Soon after the couple entered the water park, the rowdy youth started passing lewd remarks at four women members of Dharmendra's family....

Vijay Upadhyay Agra. The Agra police has registered a first information report (FIR) against an official of the UP Government on charges of bigamy. An NRI girl alleged that she had been sexually exploited by the official on pretext of marriage. According to the police, the Senior Superintendent of Police, Agra, received a complaint from the New York based recently. The victim said that she had come to Agra in January 2003. Sharad Chandra, a trade tax official posted in Mathura at that time, used to come to her home in Agra and it was there that they developed an intimate relationship. The accused had allegedly promised to marry the NRI girl after divorcing his first wife. Believing to the promise, she returned to the USA and maintained the relationship with the accused on phone. The girl, in her complaint, further alleged that in April 2004, Sharad told her that he had divorced his wife and was ready to marry her. After that she returned to India and tried to meet him...

Vijay Upadhyay Agra. Every youngster harbours a dream but for this young man in Agra, it took an entirely different turn when after completing the saat phere, he was back to the hospital bed where he has been struggling for life for the past one week. Yogesh Sharma, a resident of Agra, ran a commodity trading post in Mathura and his wedding had been fixed for this week but just one week before his wedding, Yogesh was called off from his trading post by some of his friends who, following some argument, repeatedly stabbed him in the abdomen and left him to die on the Agra-Delhi highway. Injured seriously and bleeding profusely, Yogesh was rushed to a hospital in Mathura. There, he was referred to Agra and since then, has remained admitted in the CCU of the Ram Raghu hospital. While Yogesh was fighting to hold on to his life, it was too much for his family, who had made all preparations for his wedding this week. Doctors were not sure as to how long it would take Yo...

Mostly, manufacturers in the low-priced segment hit Vishal Sharma New Delhi/ Agra. Apart from a few large footwear manufacturers, the Agra footwear industry mainly comprises 800-1,000 small-scale units engaged in the manufacture of low-cost leather and non-leather shoes and accessories. But while the footwear manufacturers in the upper price segment are reaping the maximum profits by exporting footwear to European countries, the low-priced segment is entirely dependent on domestic consumption. These small scale units have been the worst hit lately by the Uttar Pradesh government’s decision to levy 8 per cent trade tax on leather and 4 per cent trade tax on non-leather shoes, irrespective of their price. While this decision of the state government has resulted in a price rise in non-leather footwear in the local footwear market, the tax has also resulted in the closure of a number of small family-run cottage units that were either assembling shoes from leather scrap or produc...

Vijay Upadhyay Agra. Each summer, hundreds of weddings take place in the villages around Agra from April to July and the common feature in all these weddings is a "transvestite" dancing in front of the wedding procession to the sound of folk music. But this season, the village weddings have ignored transvestites and now feature "live" barat girls, dancing to popular Bollywood tunes on a "mobile DJ" dance floor constructed on a tractor-trolley. These dancing girls are none other than the bar girls of Mumbai who have returned home to Agra to wait out the "dry season" after the Maharashtra Government's ban on the dance bars in Mumbai. Over the past few months, while a number of "jobless" bar girls have taken up flesh trade to survive, hundreds of bar girls have taken a working holiday in Agra, transforming from "Bar Girls" to "Barat Girls" in a bid to cover their expenses till the bars reopen. I...

Most units unable to meet pollution norms enforced by state government Vishal Sharma New Delhi/ Agra. Barely a couple of years back, the diesel engine industry of Agra was among the largest diesel engine manufacturers of the country, manufacturing over 125,000 gensets every year. During the past two years, the industry has faced a setback due to stringent pollution norms enforced by the state government. Of around 800 small-scale units manufacturing diesel engine components in Agra, at least 60 per cent units have shut down, plunging their owners into debts while the generator production in the town has come to a standstill. Even large generator manufacturing companies like Sterling Machine Tools had to announce an untimely shutdown of its Agra units last year while many other units had to cut back on their operating costs to tide over the difficult period. Citing a reason behind the panic through the industrial circles in Agra, Sanjeev Mittal, managing director, Atul Group o...

Vijay Upadhyay Agra. The Meerut incident has not yet been erased from the minds of the country folk, when yet another similar incident threatened to renew the ghastly memories, this time in Agra. On Sunday, two hundred people had a close brush with death, when the wooden set of a wedding home caught fire during an engagement ceremony. Though the people inside the wedding home managed to save their lives by rushing out of the complex before it collapsed out of the sheer weight, atleast three people are reported to have received burn injuries from the uncontrolled flames that even licked the roofs of nearby houses. According to the police sources, the marriage hall "Krishna Vatika", spread in almost 5000 sq. yards, is located in a densely populated area of the town and on Sunday evening, it had been booked by a local resident for the engagement of his son. The function was going through the usual rituals of the engagement, when some friends of the groom s...

Vijay Upadhyay Agra. Folklore and historical records reveal that Mughal Emperor Akbar abandoned Fatehpur Sikri for Agra for want of water. Five centuries later, the second Mughal capital of Agra is also on the verge of being abandoned by its 2 million inhabitants and this time, it is the drying Yamuna that is to blame. A heritage city, Agra is facing the toughest water crisis of the past few decades. With the monsoons two months away, the Yamuna has already dried up and the only water available in the river is the industrial sewage that has floated down from the cities like Delhi and Mathura that lie upstream along the Yamuna. This water has to be purified several times in order to make it potable. The situation is made worse by the looming power crisis in Agra that prevents the water pumping stations from operating for more than a few hours. The city needs at least 25 crore litres of water every day, the corporation is unable to supply more than 18 crore litres ...

Vijay Upadhyay Agra. The UP Chief Minister Mulayam Singh Yadav may have made tall claims of holding the district magistrates responsible for hunger related deaths in their districts but in reality, hunger deaths in Uttar Pradesh have not remained constrained to the farmers alone, the evil grip of starvation is now slowly edging towards the unemployed laborers, of which, there are plenty to be found in the industry-bereaved Agra. Facing the brunt of unemployment during the past couple of years due to the closure of industries in Agra to prevent air and water pollution under directions of the Supreme Court, the industrial workers are a harried lot these days, forced to work at construction sites on petty wages. But the borderline of unemployment and poverty was breached this week when a labourer belonging to the Chief Minister's hometown committed suicide after coping up with an empty stomach for five days. According to the police sources, Jaikaran, an original resi...

Small-scale units have either cut-down on production or shut down Vishal Sharma New Delhi/ Agra. At a time when the entire state of UP is facing the worst power crisis in recent times, the power transformer manufacturing industry of Agra was hoping for good business this year, expecting a rise in demand of power correcting equipment like voltage stabilisers, CVTs and inverters but the more than two-fold rise in copper and aluminum prices over the past four months has destroyed all hopes of good business of the local transformer manufactures. As the prices of both these metals began rising since February, the small-scale power transformer manufacturing units of Agra have been facing a tough competition from the branded manufacturers whose prices have now come almost at par with the locally manufactured brands after the huge rise in metal prices. A number of such small-scale units affected by the price rise have either cut-down on their production or temporarily shut down till ...

CHANDAN MITRA If you called Pramod Mahajan's mobile, the tune that greeted you was a rather unusual one: Zindagi kaisi hai paheli, haye Kabhi yeh hansaye, kabhi yeh rulaye A soulful number, but not one you would expect to hear on a cellphone. It probably underlined Pramod's supreme belief in destiny. Understandably, for it was destiny that catapulted the eldest son of a Government school teacher from Usmanabad in the innards of rural Maharashtra to the pinnacle of popularity and fame. As his trusted personal aide, a deeply anxious Bibek Moitra told me when I visited the Hinduja Hospital last Friday, it was only his fatal injury that revealed the extent to which he had mesmerised the entire country. Pramod Mahajan was among India's most important politicians since he burst onto the national scene in 1990; in the painful process of his death, he became immortal. Kabhi dekho man mein ye jaage Peechhey peechhey sapnon ke bhaage Ek din sapnon ka raahi Chala jaye sapnon se aage...

Vishal Sharma New Delhi/ Agra. Over three years have passed since the UP State Industrial Development Corporation set up the Export Promotion Industrial Park (EPIP), at the Sikandra industrial area in Agra, to facilitate the setting up of export oriented industrial units in the state, but industrialists have so far refrained from setting up there units in the EPIP for the lack of infrastructural facilities. Out of over 160 industrial plots being allotted to various units of the city, barely a dozen had begun operating from the EPIP so far while another twenty have built up their infrastructure but have not yet moved in to begin operations from the EPIP. Worried by the lack-luster response of the industrialists on this ambitious project, the UPSIDC has decided to first complete the pending infrastructural work at the EPIP before asking the industrialists to move into the park. According to Mr. B.P. Kureel, Regional Manager UPSIDC, the EPIP had been constructed in 100 ac...

Vijay Upadhyay Agra. On Saturday, the entire police force of Agra turned up for the funeral of an elderly lady. Affectionately named, 'Police Mother', Kaneeza Begum had had the force eating out of her hands for the past twenty-five years. There was another important reason. She had willed her entire property to the Agra Police, even insisting that her house be converted into a police station.While the police had every reason to be solemnly happy at the trust she bestowed on them, her sons probably felt otherwise. In her will, the begum restrained her two sons from lending their shoulder to her coffin, leaving express instructions for the senior police officials to personally transport her body to the graveyard. Obeying the "will" in its entirety, all senior officials of Agra including Senior Superintendent of Police Rajiv Krishna and Superintendent of Police Agra City Gulab Singh attend ed the funeral that was performed with a full guard of honour. They th...

Vijay Upadhyay Agra. The notorious Bawariya gangs of Rajasthan have for long been feared by the residents of Delhi, Uttar Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh where they are known as the katchha-baniyan gangs for their sartorially risque style. Each year, the Bawariya gangs move out of refuge in the border areas of Rajasthan in the months of April and May and raid the residents of the neighbouring states. Scores of people are left injured or dead by these gangs that move about on he fringes of the cities in large groups targeting easy pickings in the warm summer nights. The only feature that distinguishes these marauding gangs from the common city criminals is their preference for dressing in a white vest and striped cotton knickers, terming it a sacrilege if they have to venture out of their homes in any other garb. After years of looting and murdering in this traditional outfit the kutchha-baniyan gangs are reverting to more traditional forms of clothing to prevent detection by the police, it...

Vishal Sharma New Delhi/ Agra. Tourists at the Taj Mahal may not have to stand in long queues to gain entry, from August this year. Worried about the negative response among tourists, especially the foreign ones, by the delay in ticket buying at the Taj Mahal, the Archaeological Survey of India has decided to introduce e-ticketing facility at the monument by the end of July or the first week of August. Talking to Business Standard, S K Sharma, assistant superintending archaeologist, Archaeological Survey of India, Agra, said 12,000-15,000 tourists visited the Taj each day and a tourist had to stand in the queue for 10-15 minutes outside the monument gate. To provide a quick solution to this problem, he said the ASI had decided to introduce the "Metro railway-style" e-ticketing system at the Taj Mahal, apart from some other important monuments in Delhi, where a tourist could buy a ticket from an automated ticket-vending machine and enter the monument by inserting t...