News on Agra & Current Affairs

Vijay Upadhyay Agra. In a macabre accident in Uttar Pradesh on Monday, a woman gave birth while trapped in a burning car. The woman and the newborn perished in the mishap. The incident occurred on Kasganj-Sikandrarau Road near Etah, when the car in which Manoj Sharma and his pregnant wife Neelam were travelling, slipped off the road into a ditch and caught fire. The woman was trapped inside and the heat in the car was so intense that while she burnt to death, she delivered a child. Manoj reportedly managed to extract himself from the burning car and, surprisingly, escaped unhurt. Manoj was found by the police in an unconscious state beside the charred car. According to the Deputy Superintendent of Police of Sikandrarau Charan Pal Singh, Manoj Sharma, a resident of State Bank Colony in Kasganj in Etah had gone to Delhi with Neelam a few days ago and was returning home on Monday when his car slipped off the road into a ditch and caught fire. Manoj managed to extract hi...

Vishal Sharma New Delhi/ Agra October 25, 2006 After almost a year of deliberations, the Union ministry for commerce has given its approval for the setting up of a special economic zone for leather and leather products in Agra. To be established on the Agra-Delhi national highway on at least 100 hectares, the project will be designed and developed by Parshavnath Developers Ltd, for which the company has been given a year to submit its detailed project report (DPR). This had started as a project for establishing a multi-product special economic zone in Agra. However, the industrial development project, visualised by the National Chamber of Commerce, UP, faced a setback with the notification issued recently by the central government, which has ruled out the possibility of setting up a multi-product SEZ in Agra due to the unavailability of at least 1,000 hectares of vacant non-agricultural, industrial land near the town. Talking to Business Standard, Anil Verma, president, NCIC, UP, sai...

Vishal Sharma New Delhi/ Agra October 24, 2006 New Delhi-based Global Infocomm is planning to open 600 real estate showrooms at a cost of Rs 120 crore. Of the 600 real estate showrooms, 70 will be set up in Uttar Pradesh with an investment of Rs 15 crore. SK Jain, managing director, Global Infocomm Ltd, said the property shops were places where people could buy, sell or rent properties instantly. Jain said the company planned to open a countrywide chain of property shops, starting with 16 in Delhi and the NCR, Lucknow and Kanpur by December. Agra and remaining districts of UP would follow by the end of next year The 1,000-sq ft showrooms would have a five-star ambience and a centralised presentation system. Jain said the property shops would be interlinked through a VPN network to the company portal “Jaaydaad.com”, which would serve as a centralised database of all the hot properties listed at the 600 property shops for sale or rent. Through these property showrooms, he said the compan...

Vishal Sharma New Delhi/ Agra October 24, 2006. Over a decade after establishing itself as one of the town’s few branded men’s footwear manufacturers, Agra-based Guru Shoes Tech Pvt Ltd has decided to diversify into all-leather ladies’ and kids’ footwear by setting up a manufacturing unit with an investment Rs 2 crore. Chander Daulatani, managing director of the firm, said the company was at present manufacturing only men’s footwear under the brandname “Valentino” at its manufacturing unit near the Taj Mahal. The firm manufactures over 70 types of shoes and produces close of 400 pairs of leather shoes and boots every day. Daulatani said it was decided that production of ladies’ and kids’ line would be started at a new unit, being built in the city’s industrial area at Sikandra, at a cost of Rs 2 crore. Production is expected to start by the end of November after the machinery is brought in place. He said the firm was one of the first footwear companies in Agra to have...

Vijay Upadhyay   Agra.                 A minor dispute over gambling in a shoe factory at Mantola area of Agra turned into a violent communal clash on Tuesday night, bringing the entire city into the grip of terror in the dead of night. Two police personnel and a dozen local residents were injured in police firing to control the mob. According to Dr. Siraj Qureshi, a resident of the Mantola area, the dispute began when some people belonging to one community raised objection to a make-shift gambling house being run by the other community at a shoe factory located on the Madina crossing. Reacting to the objection, the gamblers attacked them. Though the local police station was barely two hundred metres away from the site, they took two hours in reaching there, by which time, the situation had aggravated considerably. The situation was brought under control at about 1 am on Wednesday. 

Vijay Upadhyay   Agra.        The Indian shooting team may not have been able to aim for gold in the Olympics but the team's sharpshooter coach has definitely scored a gold medal in shooting down his opponents in the UP Government.   To celebrate this success, this Olympian has thrown a grand feast at the Agra Municipal Corporation on Sunday, inviting the entire municipal staff and local dignitaries. Transferred and suspended repeatedly by the Government from the post of Municipal Commissioner of Agra, Shyam Singh Yadav, has always succeeded in getting the orders against him reverted through the court by claiming that he was being subjected to political vendetta. Better known for developing a world-class shooting range in Agra, Yadav has always remained the centre of controversy, first when he targeted a high-profile hotel of Agra by enormously increasing its property tax, after which, he alleges, he was transferred from Agra by the Government under pressure from UP Development Cou...

Vishal Sharma   New Delhi / Agra.              At a time when foreign airlines are eyeing Agra as a possible destination for international charter trips, Indian Airlines has taken the unprecedented step of shortening the Delhi-Agra-Khajuraho-Varanasi air sector by skipping Agra altogether. According to sources at the local Indian Airlines office, the Delhi-Agra-Khajuraho-Varanasi flight had been revived as a trial for this tourist season, when the flow of foreign tourists to Khajuraho and Varanasi was at its peak but they could not give specific reasons for skipping Agra other than citing low traffic volumes. However, local tourism industry sources said about two years ago due to the shortage of aircraft and a supposedly low volume of traffic, it had been the only regular aircraft service to Agra, ferrying as many as 200 tourists to and from the town to the destinations like Khajuraho, Varanasi and Delhi, generating a profitable business for the company. UP Handicrafts Development Cent...

Vijay Upadhyay   Agra.                        Taking an unprecedented stand on the local body elections being held in Uttar Pradesh, the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) has decided to abstain from contesting these elections warning the aspiring candidates that they will neither get the party flag nor the "elephant" as a symbol of party support. The elections in Uttar Pradesh will be held in three phases on October 28, October 31 and November 3. Elections to 193 municipalities would be held in the first phase while the 12 municipal corporations would go to polls on October 31. Elections to 420 town areas would be held in the third phase on November 3. Talking to The Pioneer, Kaptaan Singh Kushwah, Coordinator, Agra parliamentary seat of the BSP said that this decision had been taken in party interest after the experience of the previous Zila Panchayat elections held in the state when the BSP had lost a great deal of elected members to defections into the Samajwadi Party. 

Vishal Sharma   New Delhi/ Agra.                    In view of the tough competition being faced by the Uttar Pradesh development authorities from private financing institutions on housing loans, the UP government has decided to reduce the interest rates on housing loan from almost 23 per cent to 11 per cent. This rate would be 1.5 times higher for commercial properties. After a meeting of the finance controllers of the housing boards and development authorities of the state held recently, it was decided that since the high interest rates were not in the best interest of the development authorities, who were not getting enough buyers for their properties, the rates should be reduced to at least half of the present interest rates. According to the sources at the Agra Development Authority, development authorities all over the state were charging an interest of up to 23 per cent from the people who had leased their properties but private financing institutions and banks were shelli...

Vijay Upadhyay   Agra.              Following a massive campaign launched by environmentalists of the town against the 'ecological blunder' orchestrated by the UP Government in the name of building a six-lane highway from the airport to the Taj Mahal, the UP Forest Department has finally agreed to defer the chopping down of trees that line the historic Mall road of Agra. But local ecologists are not ready to end the campaign yet. They are trying to muster support from noted environmentalists like Sundar Lal Bahuguna, by writing letters, asking them to interfere in the issue. Environmentalists are concerned because the move to cut the trees has only been deferred and not called off entirely by the Forest Department. The Agra district administration has termed the cutting down of trees as an 'unfortunate but inevitable' move because the roads needed to be widened. The Mall Road is also known as the thandi sadak, with thousand of trees dotting the sidewalk right from the r...