News on Agra & Current Affairs

Vijay Upadhyay Agra. The fresh delimitation of Assembly and Parliamentary seats in UP could become a major issue this year for Chief Minister Mulayam Singh Yadav, who has been freely passing hints of his intentions to get the Assembly constituency of Jaswantnagar into Kannauj, the Parliamentary constituency of his son Akhilesh. In a 'delimitation meeting' in Agra on Tuesday, Chief Election Commissioner N Gopalswami hinted that the EC would stress upon limiting the Parliamentary seats in their respective districts instead of borrowing some Assembly seats from other districts, just to ensure demographic uniformity on the seats. With the Election Commission setting the deadline for the delimitation of all Parliamentary and Assembly constituencies in UP to be completed by 31st March, 2007 and the completion of hearings for the delimitation to be completed by September 13, Mulayam Singh's efforts to get Jaswantnagar included in the Kannauj Parliamentary constituency came close ...

Vishal Sharma New Delhi/ Agra In order to attract more customers to the petrol pumps operated by it in the rural areas and highways, Hindustan Petroleum Corporation Ltd (HPCL) will shortly introduce six new models of state-of-the-art fuel pumps at its petrol pumps in the rural areas and highways of Agra, Etah, Mathura and Badaun districts. According to company sources, the corporation wants petrol pumps to become complete ‘utility terminals’ for consumers, who could buy anything from groceries to airline tickets, during their brief stop at the petrol pump. Sources said in the coming months, about 20 petrol pumps in the four districts of Agra, Etah, Mathura and Badaun would be completely computerised and then be connected directly to the corresponding area office, which would have complete command over these pumps and a daily report of all transactions on these pumps would be automatically forwarded by these pumps to the area office. This would ensure that the company has a complete com...

Vijay Upadhyay Agra. In a series of experiments introduced by the Election Commission towards electoral reforms, 70 assembly constituencies out of the 403 constituencies in UP will act as model constituencies in the forthcoming UP assembly elections, where the new electoral rolls containing the photographs of the voters shall be brought into practice. Announcing the decision of the Election Commission to make Voter Identity Cards mandatory for the upcoming UP Assembly elections in Agra on Tuesday, N. Gopalswamy, Chief Election Commissioner (CEC) said that the issue of voter ID cards must be fulfilled by October 6 this year. The District Magistrates have been endowed with the responsibility of the concerned districts. It has been observed so far that, the seven districts in Agra division were lagging far behind, with just over 55 per cent of voter ID cards distributed till date. Earlier, Gopalswamy had arrived in Agra to review the preparations for the forthcoming elections in th...

Situated barely a km away from the Taj Mahal, Diwanji Begum's tomb is a lost piece of Mughal history that nobody cared about till date. With the ASI working in full swing to conserve it, the perils surrounding it are blocking its way, says Vijay Upadhyay It is a lost piece of Mughal history that nobody cared about till date. Now when the ASI has set off to re-discover and conserve history, there is very little left to conserve and that too, is going down in shambles due to the continuous danger posed by the locals who still treat this monument as a public urinal and recreational area despite the ASI taking it over for conservation. Diwanji Begum, the mother-in- law of Emperor Shahjahan is considered to be one of the lesser known characters of the Mughal empire and till early this year, even the Archeological Survey of India was hardly aware that barely a km away from the Taj Mahal, the emperor's mother-in-law lay interred in a plain tomb, in sharp contrast to the ornate tomb...

Vijay Upadhyay Agra. The security agencies have set up bullet-proof gun-shelters on the gates of Taj Mahal following another terrorist threat to blow up the monument. Orders have also been issued to shopkeepers conducting their businesses at the eastern gate of the Taj Mahal to move to a new complex, about two km away from the area. On Thursday, Agra Superintendent of Police Gulab Singh received a letter, supposedly written by an Al-Quaida operative Mohd Mirza, threatening to blow up the Taj Mahal. Interestingly, it was the same Mohd Mirza who had written a letter two months earlier to the police, threatening to blow up two Jain temples and Taj Mahal, but the police had failed to trace the identity of this so-called terrorist. Also taking the responsibility of the Mumbai train blasts, the so-called Al-Quaida operative has threatened to bomb the Rajdhani Express, Shatabdi Express, Agra Cantonment Railway Station, Sadar Bazar and Agra College if his demands for money were not met. The po...

Vijay Upadhyay Agra. The UP High Court has totally redefined the definition of tourist guides at the Agra monuments, giving a relief to the guides who had been working without a license from the Archaeological Survey of India. The High Court has ruled that a person could not be stopped from working as a guide inside the monuments just because he had not obtained a 'license' from the government. However, the court has also ruled that the so called 'unlicensed' guides would have to buy the usual entry tickets before they could function as guides inside the monument. In an order passed by the court of Justice Yatindra Singh and Justice Ran Vijai Singh on a writ petition, the court has directed the Union Ministry of Tourism, Central Industrial Security Force, Archaeological Survey of India and the Senior Superintendent of Police that until further orders of the court the petitioners (unlicensed guides) would not be stopped from working as tourist guides on the groun...

Vijay Upadhyay Agra. At a time when the entire country is ringing with the answer-sheet evaluation scam of Meerut University where answer-sheets of graduates and postgraduate students were found being evaluated by high-school students and four people were arrested in the case, a UP government official made a stunning disclosure that such scams were too common in Uttar Pradesh. He said he had informed the UP government in another university of the state about a similar scam one-year back. Talking to The Pioneer, the official, on being assured of the secrecy of his identity, said that it was incorrect to say that the Meerut incident was an anomaly as this has been a usual practice in almost all UP universities and no government ever bothered to take any action in this regard. He revealed that he came to know about this deep-rooted practice in the state universities in 2005 while working as the finance controller in one of these Universities. He said that he came across some evaluati...

Vishal Sharma New Delhi/ Agra. After making a serious dent in the motorbike market by launching its highly economical 100 cc bikes, TVS is now planning to raise its market share in the Agra region to 22 per cent from its present share of just 10 per cent. Giving an elaborate view of the company’s strategy on the occasion of the inauguration of “Sri Shakti TVS”, a new motorbike dealership and service center in Agra this week, Senior Vice-President TVS R. Chandramauli said the company had a presence in all the two-wheeler segments in the country ranging from the 150 cc “Apache” to the best-seller scooty model “Pep”. According to Chandramauli, the company had a growth rate of 30 per cent in the entire country while in Uttar Pradesh, it was an astounding 61 per cent, with the credit going to the economical 100 cc. models introduced by the company over the past couple of years. In Agra, he said, TVS had a market share of 10 per cent currently but the target was to achieve a market...

Vijay Upadhyay Agra. For fear of getting caught in the police raids following the Ch Charan Singh University evaluation scam, even those city teachers who obtained the answer sheets from the Meerut university legitimately, are busy getting rid of the "incriminating" documents. Over the past few days, thousands of Meerut university's answer sheets have been found abandoned in the fields on the outskirts of Agra, indicating that not only the evaluation racket but even the teachers who were directly engaged by the university for evaluation are in no mood to be found in possession of the documents. An FIR has been lodged against one Dr Rajnikant under section 420 and 201 of IPC for allegedly distributing the answer sheets to bogus examiners for evaluation. All through Tuesday, the police raided the residents of some teachers at Agra university's Khandari campus in search of the copies, after clues indicated that these teachers too had been engaged in the eva...

Vishal Sharma New Delhi/ Agra. Paper traders have decided to press UP Chief Minister Mulayam Singh Yadav to adopt VAT in the state and ask for a stringent policy on the import of foreign paper into the country. Almost 400 paper traders from all over the country got together in Agra for three days to discuss the consequenses of doing business in UP, where value-added tax (VAT) is not in force. A conference on this had been organised by Assocham and the Federation of Paper Traders Association during August 13-15. Addressing this conference, Dasgupta said the states where VAT had been introduced had experienced a 26 per cent increase in their revenue in the past three months alone while the annual growth of revenue for the states was in the tune of 12 per cent. He said even Tamil Nadu had given its assurance to implement VAT from January 1, 2007 and by not adapting VAT, UP was creating problems in establishing a uniform tax structure in the country. Talking to Business Standar...

Vishal Sharma New Delhi/ Agra. Shortly after Allahabad Bank got a new chairman & managing director Avinash Chandra Mahajan this month, its Agra operations have suffered a major jolt as it has come close to losing its largest and one of the oldest clients, worth almost Rs 200 crore, to other nationalised banks. On Thursday, Dr B R Ambedkar University of Agra broke its 40-year-old association with Allahabad Bank and shifted one of its accounts worth Rs 28.90 crore to Syndicate Bank while it prepared to shift the rest of its accounts worth about Rs 120 crore to other banks, pending some formalities, creating a rush among bankers of the town to capture one of the biggest accounts of the town. In this, Syndicate Bank is ahead of the rest, having offered 8.5 per cent rate of interest on fixed deposits and 7.5 per cent of “Flexi savings accounts” to the University. Talking to Business Standard, A Q Ansari, the university finance officer, said the university had been operating all i...