News on Agra & Current Affairs

Vishal Sharma New Delhi/ Agra. After coming too close to losing the Software Technology Park project to Aligarh for the lack of adequate location, the Agra Development Authority has finally agreed to allocate land for the project near the industrial area at Shastri Puram on the Agra-Delhi highway. The Software Technology Park project for Agra had been approved by the Software Technology Parks of India Ltd (STPI) about four years back but the project never took off due to the paucity of land at the locations suggested by STPI. Now, with the ADA arriving on a decision in a meeting held last week to allot about 2 acre of its land at Shastri Puram for establishing the STP, the local IT industry is upbeat about the business and employment possibilities it could generate for the town’s IT professionals as well as bringing Agra on the country’s software export chart. Talking to Business Standard, Rakshit Tandon, who runs an IT consultancy firm apart from heading a number of IT ...

Vijay Upadhyay Agra. It is the only annual tourism event organised in Agra by the UP tourism department and this year the much-awaited Taj Mahotsava shall feature a 'begging bowl' in the hands of the Agra administrators, after the tourism department failed to sanction funds for organising this fest. The ten-day Taj Mahotsava, slated to be held from February 18 to 27 each year, marks the formal closure of the tourism season in western India and has even been listed in the annual festival calendar of the Union Tourism Ministry. But this year, after the State's tourism department sanctioned just Rs one lakh for the event, the responsibility of arranging funds for the event has fallen on the shoulders of the Agra District Magistrate, who in turn, has passed over this 'bowl' to his subordinates, asking them to arrange for funds from various government departments and private entrepreneurs. Talking to The Pioneer, DK Burman, Jt Director (Tourism), UP said that the Taj Ma...

Vishal Sharma   New Delhi/ Agra.                 After having failed to attract builders for more than an acre land it had offered on long-term lease for the construction of a multi-storied shopping mall, the Agra Cantonment Board has now decided to construct the shopping mall itself, on self-finance basis. According to the Cantonment Board sources, the board was planning to construct a state-of-the-art multi-storied shopping mall on its land measuring about 1.06 acres, primely located at the Mall road. The shopping mall project was planned to have pre-fabricated shops of an area as desired by the interested party, which would be leased out for a period of 30 years after which, the lease will have to be renewed. Sources claimed the shopping mall was still on the drawing board and the final layout of the mall would be prepared according to the requirements received by the Cantonment Board from the interested parties by the end of this month. Notably, the board had earlier planned to...

Viay Upadhyay Agra. Following the Nithari incident, Agra has come under media scanner with human bones and visceral remains being recovered from quite unlikely places in Agra, Mathura and now Etah. Although every time the local authorities have denied the repeat of a "Nithari" in the region, they blame it on the exaggerated reporting by the media. On Sunday, the sleepy town of Etah, about 80 km from Agra, was jolted when a private news channel reported the recovery of numerous human bones and skulls from a partially dried pond, fuelling speculations of another "Nithari" taking place in the town. After a police investigation, it was revealed that the heap of bones and skulls recovered from the pond and a nearby dilapidated building were as old as 125 years. And the bones had been stored in the building, which was, in fact, an old mortuary, which had been discarded for the new building back in 1998. Since then, the viscera and bones stockpiled in the post-m...

Vishal Sharma New Delhi. In an effort to promote the growth of cottage and small scale industries in Agra, the Small Industries Services Institute (SISI), working under the Union ministry for small industries, has decided to offer the small industries of Agra a chance to participate in three international trade fairs to be held in France, Hong Kong and Australia. The industrialists of Agra and Firozabad have been invited to participate in the international handicrafts and trade fair to be held in Leon, France between 16-26th March where the industrialists will be able to display their product line to international buyers. The other fairs include the international trade fair of leather fashion garments to be held in Hong Kong between 28th and 30th March, and the multi-purpose cottage industry trade fair to be held in Melbourne. In all these three fairs, the industrialists will be given a travel subsidy of up to 90 per cent on air fare, up to 60 per cent subsidy on stall rentals and frei...

Vow not to take illegal decisions under pressure Vijay Upadhyay   Agra.            The image of the bureaucracy in Uttar Pradesh is often ranked among the most corruption-infested administrative machineries across the country. But the State's bureaucrats are now unwilling to continue being labelled with this negative image, which, they claim, has been attributed to them due to the 'unholy' nexus of some select bureaucrats with the politicians and mafia. Vowing to reveal the roots of this nexus, the UP bureaucrats took out a road-march on the streets of Agra on Friday, under the aegis of the 'UP Officers Council', led by council chairman and senior State administrative official Hardev Singh, voicing the anger of the officers of 'UP Provincial Civil Services' (UPPCS) against their being 'branded' corrupt officials. Judging from the current political scenario in the State, where Assembly elections are imminent and the State officials are facing one or t...

Vishal Sharma   New Delhi/ Agra.               Footwear exports account for nearly half of the industrial strength of Agra with nearly 200 footwear export units marketing their products in the European and middle-eastern countries. But, despite being on the front-foot in terms of quality, the Agra shoes lag behind in marketing, where China still leads the business. To increase the visibility of Agra footwear in the world market, 35 footwear exporters will be setting up their stalls at the 67th Expo Riva Schuh, the biggest international footwear trade fair, to be held in Riva del Garda, Trentino, Italy, from January 13 to 16, under the aegis of the Agra Footwear Manufacturers and Exporters Chamber (AFMEC). According to Captain Ajit Rana, Chairman AFMEC, the stress of the footwear exporters in this year’s expo shall be on presenting the “Winter Collection” of footwear, both gents and ladies, comprising of long boots etc. and hopefully, the Agra exporters shall be able to bag major ...

Vijay Upadhyay Agra. It is easy to join a mafia but hard to leave outside a coffin". This old Sicilian proverb may date back to the days when mafias ruled the land but it still holds water as was proved in Agra last week, when a youth tried to escape the clutches of the local examination mafia and committed suicide when he found himself cornered. Asti Shanker Sharma, a computer graphics designer from Meerut, who worked at a graphics concern in the Sanjay Place commercial complex of the town, had been found by the police, hanging from the ceiling of a room of a local budget hotel on Saturday. In the course of investigations, the police found a shocking piece of evidence that pointed the links of this deceased youth with the examination mafia of Agra that used his services for churning out fake marksheets by the dozens. In a suicide note left by him, Asti Shanker claimed that he had been employed at Arshi Graphics, a local graphics designing shop owned by Avinash Yadav at a...

Vishal Sharma New Delhi/ Agra. The rising popularity of the newly-established shopping malls of Agra has propelled the local consumer brand leaders into a rat race to acquire space in these malls. The Bachoomal Group, one of the biggest family-run garment retail store chains of the town, has already established its presence in a number of shopping malls in Agra as well as the Highway Plaza in Mathura. It also plans to open two stores in the shopping mall being developed by Taneja Developers this month. The group already runs more than half a dozen independent stores in the town and prides itself to be a house-hold name in the premium garment retail business. Apart from the Bachoomal Group, the second major contender for space at the upcoming TDI mall is Dawar shoes, a premium footwear store chain of Agra. But with the entry of multinational brands like M&B Shoes, Cantabil, Study by Janak, Status Quo, Catmoss, Liliput, Shahnaz Hussain, Gini & Jony, Numero Uno, Me...

Vishal Sharma   New Delhi/ Agra.                 Coming close on the heels of the launch of Compressed Natural Gas (CNG)-based bus service in Lucknow and Kanpur, the UP State Road Transport Corporation’s CNG City Bus Service was formally inaugurated by the state’s transport minister Naresh Agarwal in Agra on Thursday. Though the UPSRTC had already begun operations of the bus service in the city about a fortnight back, the service was formally declared operational on Thursday by the minister, who said initially, the UPSRTC would introduce 15 CNG buses in the city and in the second phase, this number would be augmented with 100 more buses, completely shifting the city's public transport system on CNG instead of diesel. He said the UPSRTC had earned a profit of Rs 40 crore last year and it was going utilise this profit to introduce 1,200 new buses in the entire state to replace the older buses. Notably, being located in the environmentally sensitive Taj Trapezium Zone, the UP go...

Vijay Upadhyay   Agra.                  Former Prime Minister Vishwanath Pratap Singh said UP Chief Minister Mulayam Singh Yadav has become 'politically unfit' and he needs treatment. Addressing a Janmorcha rally in Agra on Sunday at the Post & Telegraph Grounds, in the presence of noted Communist leader Atul Kumar Anjan, Singh said Janmorcha was striving for a 'Mulayam-Free' State by taking out the 'Mukti Sangram' Yatra and, hopefully, the mission would be accomplished in the forthcoming elections. Commenting on the statement of Mulayam Singh's brother and PWD Minister Shivpal Singh Yadav on the Nithari incident, he said that the UP Chief Minister and his Cabinet needed to be kept under psychiatric observation as they have lost the presence of mind and were giving ridiculous statements on such grave issues. He said that the UP Chief Minister should take the moral responsibility of the Nithari incident and resign as he had not even cared to visit Noida ...

Vijay Upadhyay   Agra.               Often called the tourist haven, Agra is now fast gaining notoriety of being a 'black hole' for tourists as two Japanese tourists have been reported missing from this city of Taj in the past four months. Following the disappearance of a Japanese student Kota Shinozaki from Agra in September, the Agra police has been baffled yet again by the disappearance of another Japanese student Asai Kotu Hiro this week from Taj Mahal. According to Rajesh Dwivedi, Station Officer, Tajganj Police Station, Kotu Hiro, a student in Japan, had arrived in Agra on January 1 in a taxi hired from Delhi based Incredible Travel Agency and had booked a room in hotel Apollo on the Fatehabad Road. He left the hotel to walk a short distance down to the Taj Mahal but did not return. Worried about his well-being, the taxi-driver informed the hotel manager and his travel agency who immediately began a search for Kotu Hiro in Varanasi, which is the most likely destination wh...

Vishal Sharma New Delhi/ Agra. Despite the assurances of Uttar Pradesh Chief Secretary Naveen Chandra Bajpei to petrol pump owners in the state over reduction of trade tax on petrol and diesel, UP Chief Minister Mulayam Singh Yadav has ruled out any possibility of cutting down the trade tax to the levels demanded by the pump owners. He said the move would cause unnecessary burden on the state’s exchequer. Angered by the chief minister’s policy, the petrol dealers have threatened yet another strike if the minister did not change hid stand. Talking to the mediapersons in Agra on Wednesday, Yadav said if the trade tax on petrol and diesel was reduced, it would cause a serious slump in UP’s economy which shall lose a revenue of about Rs 1,000 crore and the development of the state would suffer greatly. He said the state government was not considering any reduction of tax rates in the near future and the pump owners should desist from taking such drastic steps like indefin...