News on Agra & Current Affairs

Vijay Upadhyay Agra. It is often said that "too many cooks spoil the broth" and, according to BJP president Rajnath Singh, this is what is happening with the country's economy, which is being torn to shreds by three "top economists" of the country - Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, Finance Minister P Chidambaram and Planning Commission Chairman Montek Singh Ahluwalia. Addressing his first rally in the Ramlila grounds of Agra on Sunday after he assumed the leadership of the BJP, which is also being seen as the first pre-poll declaration of the party's readiness to go into election mode in UP, party chief Rajnath Singh said the country was being dragged into a void by the Congress-led UPA Government. He said it had created a history in economic mismanagement by its awry policies and resulted in the worst foodgrains crisis in the past ten years at a time when the country could have been comfortably self-reliant in foodgrains and other essential commoditi...

Vishal Sharma New Delhi/ Agra. Following the recent directions of the central excise department to the Agra shoe manufacturers to indicate maximum retail price (MRP) mandatory on shoe packets, before they were made available to retailers, small-scale footwear manufacturers have decided to oppose this, even if that means shutting down their business. On Thursday, the Agra Shoe Factors Federation was on a strike, comprising footwear manufacturers and retailers of the town, against the directives and later held a meeting where it was indicated that the footwear manufacturers may take legal action. Later, talking to media persons, Raj Kumar Sama, president, Agra Shoe Factors Federation, said the MRP issue would have negligible effect on the large footwear manufactures of the town as most of them manufactured footwear for export, and the order was applicable only for footwear meant for domestic sales, either through retail shops or bulk sales. According to Sama, most of the footwear ...

Vijay Upadhyay Agra. The Agra Police have come up with a unique mode of investigation, following the latest threats to blow up the Taj Mahal and a Jain Temple on Aug15. The police had received some letters allegedly written by Mohd Mirza, an operative of the terrorist organisation Al-Qaida. The local police have come up with a unique mode of investigating the identity of the "miscreants" who wrote this letter to create nation-wide panic. Even though the local police have declared the threat letters to have been written by local mischief mongers, no terrorist organisation or the Intelligence Bureau has taken the matter seriously enough for the Dy. Director IB Shiv Vardhan Singh to make a trip down to Agra, just to check upon the security arrangements of the Taj Mahal. On Wednesday, Shiv Vardhan Singh visited the Taj Mahal in the afternoon and went through the security arrangements available at the Taj in detail. He recommended that the cloak room and ticket counters bui...

Vishal Sharma New Delhi/ Agra. Agra is about to witness a major change in its industrial profile with major software manufacturers like Microsoft beginning to pay more attention to it. This August, Microsoft is going to host the worldwide finals of the prestigious Imagine Cup in Agra for the first time in the four years of the beginning of this competition. According to Sheila Gulati, director, developer and platform evangelism, Microsoft India, Imagine Cup was a global student competition that served as a platform for students from across the world to showcase their software development skills, empowering them to apply their creativity, knowledge and technical abilities towards making the world a better place through technology, and to encourage students to develop applications which are relevant in today’s context. Gulati said the Imagine Cup Worldwide Finals would be held at Agra from August6 to 11, 2006 and contestants would have the opportunity to win cash prizes totaling up to $...

Vijay Upadhyay Agra. After stripping vehicles off their 'designation plates' - including those which proclaimed the State's top politicians, bureaucrats and police officials -- in a special drive last week, the Uttar Pradesh Transport Department is now seeking legal opinion on the applicability of this order on the armed forces' vehicles. Talking to The Pioneer, UP transport commissioner RP Shukla said that while hearing a writ petition on correct implementation of traffic rules in the State, the High Court of Uttar Pradesh had passed an order asking the Transport Department to ensure vehicles plying on the streets of the State fully complied with the Central Motor Vehicles (3rd Amendment) Rules 2000. The Central Motor Vehicles (3rd Amendment) Rules 2000 include installation of correct format vehicle number plates - and forbids all other types of designation plates -- fitted on either Government or private vehicles. Following this order, he said, the Transport...

Vijay Upadhyay Agra. The prices of sugar may have been skyrocketing in the country over the past few months, but for the newspaper readers of Agra, sugar prices are something they hardly need to worry about. The media competition induced by the entry of a new Hindi newspaper in Agra has brought a shower of freebies being offered by the two leading Hindi dailies of the town, including "free sugar", being distributed all over the town by these newspapers on the tunes of remix music with "no lucky draws" to participate. This month, with the launch of the local edition of Dainik Hindustan in Agra, the readership battle between the two leading dailies of the town - Dainik Jagran and Amar Ujala - has suddenly grown stronger, having developed a third dimension in the form of the new entrant Hindustan that has been offering free copies of the newspaper to the readers of its two competitors. Wary of the sudden warmed-up competition due to the entry of Hindustan in th...

Vijay Upadhyay Agra. When Seema and Shanti (names changed) disappeared from their home, their parents would never have imagined that these two young girls would surface two years later married to men old enough to be their father. The ordeal that these two young girls, aged 10 and 12 years, faced in the period that they were missing would be hard to comprehend, What is equally difficult to understand is the fact that these two girls had been living in Agra since the past two years with their so called husbands and the police did not make any attempts to search for them despite repeated complaints by the their brother to the Deputy Inspector General of Police Agra and Firozabad MP, Ramji Lal Suman. Abducted from their home by a distant relative and sold for Rs. 1 lac each to two middle-aged men, both Seema and Shanti had been raped repeatedly over the past two years by their 'husbands' and were being forced to live as' married' women when Ajit, the 14-year-ol...

Vijay Upadhyay Agra. Barely a couple of days before his arrival in Agra for probably the largest public meeting of his current tenure, UP Chief Minister Mulayam Singh Yadav has come close to being ditched by his principal ally in the Government - Rashtriya Lok Dal - with a Minister in his Cabinet declaring an open feud against him. On Thursday, Minister of State for Food Processing in the Mulayam Singh Government from the RLD quota Babulal held an open meeting and dharna at the Agra Collectorate with thousands of his supporters and declared a halla bol against the State Government, claiming that the RLD quota ministers were being sidelined by the Chief Minister. He also alleged that they were being subjected to disgrace by the local administration of their constituency despite the fact that the RLD was the principal ally and "king maker" of the State Government whose support was crucial for the government to remain in power. Announcing his objection to the "Yadav-centr...

Vishal Sharma New Delhi/ Agra. After a three-month slump, the computer trade in Agra and nearby towns is finally showing signs of revival, with sales picking up. Branded personal computer (PC) companies like Intel, HCL, Compaq, Lenovo. have launched promotional packages to cash in on this boost in the PC market in Agra region. According to the estimates, the PC market was expected to grow by more than 50 per cent in the Agra region during the current month and it can maintain a steady growth rate in the coming 6-8 months, peaking at over 150 per cent of the total PC sales in the months of May and June. City Computers Pvt Ltd Director Parvinder Basu said the PC market grew at 70-100 per cent each year and this year too it was expected that in the next six months the Agra market alone would place a demand for at least 3,000 PCs and laptops. Even from the neighbouring cities of Mathura, Aligarh, Firozabad, etc demand for another 1,000 PCs was expected. He said in a small-town ...

Vishal Sharma New Delhi/ Agra. Following the success of its debut project “Ansal Courtyard” in Agra, Ansal Housing & Construction Ltd, one of the leading real estate developers in India, announced the launch of yet another Rs 200 crore housing project “Ansal Town” in Agra on Tuesday. Talking to Business Standard on this occasion, President Kushagr Ansal said Ansal Town would be spread over 130 acres, located on the proposed 100-metre expressway passing close to the Taj Mahal and was easily accessible from all major state highways. According to Ansal, the project will have 1,250 housing units in all, costing Rs 14–25 lakh, with plot sizes varying between 150 and 300 metres. And opposed to the established concept of “designer townships”, there is an option for purchasing independent plots at Rs 8-14 lakh where a house could be constructed according to the customised requirement of the buyer instead of going for a “pre-fab” house design. Ansal said Ansal town had bee...

Vijay Upadhyay Agra. Almost seven years after dozens of people were injured in the collapse of a large platform constructed for the shooting of a Zee Television musical programme behind the Taj Mahal, the UP government has ordered a fresh inquiry into the incident, terming the earlier inquiry as insufficient. According to a letter sent by the special secretary (Home), UP, Saurabh Babu to Agra district magistrate Sanjay Prasad, the report submitted by the then inquiry committee had been insufficient and had failed to nail down the culprits behind this unfortunate incident and there was a need to begin a fresh inquiry in which the responsibility of those involved in this incident shall have to be ascertained so that action could be taken against them for their negligence. Zee Telefilms Ltd. had organised a special shooting of its musical programme "Close Up Antakshari" on the banks of river Yamuna behind the Taj Mahal on March 11, 1999 and in the midst of this shooting,...

Vijay Upadhyay Agra. A case has been filed against two brothers for allegedly shooting MMS clippings of a schoolgirl in a compromising position and then blackmailing her to fulfil their carnal desire in Mathura on Sunday. Sources said the blackmailing continued for almost six months. Talking to the Pioneer, Shishupal Singh Negi, SHO, Highway Police Station in Mathura, said on Sunday that Kamini Singh (name changed), a student of class-X of a central government school of Mathura arrived at the Highway police station with her ex-militaryman father and filed a complaint against the two brothers Bittu and Bablu. She said the two brothers - residing in her locality - had taken her pictures in a compromising position with their mobile in January 2006. "Since then they have been coaxing me to fulfil their sexual appetite or pay Rs 1 lakh for the images. They threatened me that if I failed to oblige them they would go public with the clippings and even post them on the Intern...