News on Agra & Current Affairs

It is a 25-km death zone where even cops don't venture. Routinely, dead bodies are seen hanging from acacia trees and the area is littered with human bones. Victims are rarely identified and never ever recovered alive. Averaging 25 bodies a year, this stretch has gained unprecedented notoriety, reports Vijay Upadhyay In February 2006, bodies of a love couple were found hanging from two trees a few meters apart. As no suicide note was found, their death was termed an "honour killing by their families". The bodies had been stripped and were so decomposed that they could not be identified. This, however, was not the first time that bodies were found hanging from trees in a small stretch of forested land which is commonly known as Agra's Zone of Death. A 25-km strip of Acacia trees located on the border of Agra and the adjoining district of Hathras has gained strange notoriety. The reason? The forest is full of dead bodies and no policeman dares to enter these ravines to...

Vishal Sharma / New Delhi/ Agra SME s of Agra have for long been lagging in the world markets due to their lack of credibility among the international clients, and this factor alone plays the biggest role in the low international business volume generated by local SMEs. As a solution, the National Chamber of Industries & Commerce, UP, has now sought the help of the SME Ratings Agency of India Ltd (SMERA) to assist Agra industrialists in obtaining registration with Dun & Bradstreet (D&B) to help local SMEs gain international credibility. This will be through a nine-digit “D-U-N-S” number, which is a unique identifier sequence for every business worldwide. A meeting of the SMERA and chamber officials was held in Agra recently, where the agency stressed the need for SMEs obtaining both ratings from the SMERA and D&B to help them do business in both domestic as well as international markets. According to SMERA officials, obtaining an SMERA rating was the first step for the...

Vishal Sharma / New Delhi/ Agra W ith the opening of the Agra-Mumbai highway following the ceasefire in the Gujjar crisis in Rajasthan, the leather footwear and accessories industry of Agra can heave a sigh of relief. Trucks of raw material have finally begun pouring into the city, after almost a week, carrying quality leather from Chennai just in time to prevent a leather crisis in the town. However, the marble handicraft and carpet manufacturers of the town are still faced with uncertainty with the supply routes for marble and dyed wool from Rajasthan remaining blocked and the local stocks of raw material depleting fast. According to industry sources, the entire supply of marble in Agra for handicrafts and souvenirs came from Makrana and its nearby mines in Rajasthan. Owing to the precarious situation in Rajasthan over the Gujjar reservation issue, the supply of fresh stone had come to an abrupt halt with no indications about the possible resumption of supplies in near future, result...

Vishal Sharma / New Delhi/ Agra E leven months after its formal announcement by the Union Ministry of Commerce, Parshvanath Developers is gearing up to submit the proposal for the leather and allied products SEZ to the ministry before the June 25 deadline. According to the company sources, the proposal was almost ready and it shall be submitted before the deadline to ensure that the funds set aside for the SEZ did not lapse. Sources claimed that since the Agra project was a sector-specific SEZ, it only required 250 acres of land which could be arranged on the Agra-Mathura highway. Notably, the sector-specific SEZ for leather and allied products had been announced last year by the Union Minister of State for Commerce Jairam Ramesh and the project had been handed over to Parshavnath developers for construction. Since then, the local industrialists had been expressing their apprehensions on the delay being caused by the company in marking the SEZ land and submitting the project report bef...