News on Agra & Current Affairs

VISHAL SHARMA New Delhi/ Agra.                      Disposing of solid waste is fast becoming an unmanageable problem in Agra, with the municipal trenching grounds overflowing with tonnes of urban waste generated every day.    And seeing the opportunity and handsome profits in solid waste management, several companies have offered projects under the Jawaharlal Nehru National Urban Renewal Mission (JNNURM) to produce things like bio-fertilisers and electricity from this urban waste. The Agra Municipal Corporation is analysing some proposals.    Hydroair Tectonics (PCD) Pvt Ltd, a Mumbai-based environmental engineering company, has also jumped into the bandwagon, offering to develop a Rs 60-crore project in Agra that will transform urban waste into bricks, fertilisers and coal, while paying an annual licence fee of Rs 1 crore to the Agra Municipal Corp...

VISHAL SHARMA  New Delhi/ Agra                          Alarmed by slow growth in the production of milk in Uttar Pradesh, which has been stagnant at around 2.5 million litres per day for the past five years despite the increase in the number of cattle and dairies, the Uttar Pradesh government is now planning to launch a 'breeder farm' and 'dairy development' project in all the 820 developmental blocks of the state to develop new and better breeds of cattle to almost double the milk production in the coming decade.     The state's budgetary allocation for livestock and dairy will also be raised almost three times from Rs 550 crore this year to about Rs 1,500 crore in the next year for facilitating the implementation of the dairy development and breeder farm projects.    Talking to Business Standard about the project, Awadhpal ...

Vishal Sharma New Delhi/ Agra.                          The iron casting industry of Agra may have been losing on the technological front, but national industrial giants are slowly realising the huge untapped potential of the over 200 metal-casting and component manufacturing units of the town.     In a recent visit to the city's metal-casting and component-manufacturing units, RR Deshpande, Kirloskar Oil Engines Ltd indicated that the company may invite more participation from Agra-based casting units in the supply of casting products and diesel engine components in which the Agra units have been involved for decades, but without any technological advancements.    He said that KOEL, one of the leading manufacturers of engines, engine components, generating sets etc., was considering developing some of the units in Agra as its an...

Vishal Sharma New Delhi/ Agra.              Even as the Agra petha industry faces growing competition from the units being set up in other cities of UP like Lucknow and Kanpur by migrating petha workers of Agra, the UP Pollution Control Board (UPCCB) is coming down hard on the units functioning in Agra for not having adopted LPG-based stoves, threatening to seal down the units if they continued to use coal in their manufacturing process.     Talking to Business Standard, Ashok Kumar Tiwari, regional officer, UPPCB, said the petha manufacturers of Agra had been served notices recently to stop the use of coal in their stoves but most of the units continued to flout state government orders by stealthily receiving deliveries of coal at their premises in the night.    He said the Agra administration and UPPCB had banned the entry of coal trucks into the city and formed a four-member committee to oversee the ...

Vishal Sharma New Delhi/ Agra.               At a time when the price of an entry-level air conditioner has come below Rs 10,000, Khaitan Electricals Ltd, currently having a 16 per cent share in the domestic fan market, has chalked out plans to introduce designer fans costing Rs 1 lakh by March next year.    According to company Vice-Chairman and Managing Director Sunil Khaitan, who was in Agra recently for a company meeting, though the mainstay of the company is still fan manufacturing, the company is also diversifying into manufacturing CFL lights, miniature circuit breakers, wires and home appliances.    The company's latest product in this range would be a pressure cooker that is expected to be introduced in the market by the month-end.    He said Khaitan Electricals Ltd had prepared a wide range of designer underlight fans in the 'Fantasy' line and the costliest fan ...

Vishal Sharma New Delhi/ Agra. Mobile service providers in Agra are facing an acute problem. Agra is surrounded by hundreds of small villages and during the daytime most of the rural population flocks to the city for work. This has left the service providers in trouble as they are having a tough time in providing flawless service during the day because of the congestion in the network towers in the city. Whereas the rural call traffic drops to nearly 30 per cent during this time. Taking this into consideration, Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd has decided to raise the call handling capacity of its towers in the urban areas by two times, while adding another 50 towers in the areas facing the highest call congestion. According to Rajesh Kumar, deputy general manager (Mobiles), BSNL, the company currently has 124 towers in the city, serving about 150,000 subscribers while the total call handling capacity available with BSNL in the city is only for around 140,000 subscribers. This...

Vishal Sharma CONSERVATION: Hopefully, there'll be a "whiter" Taj Mahal by next year. NEW DELHI. With its place among the seven wonders of the world, reconfirmed so spectacularly, it’s time to turn to the conservation of the Taj Mahal. Environmentalists have often expressed concern at the monument’s white marble becoming “yellow” owing to the acidic reaction of the soft marble surface with the polluted air. After much debate, the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI) had proposed using a mud-pack made “Multani Mitti” (fuller’s earth, a natural bleaching agent) on the monument’s main dome and arches to give it a face-lift. Finally, a proposal to this effect was submitted for approval to ASI headquarters this week. The entire process, which could last six months, will cost about Rs 28 lakh. S K Samadhiya, deputy superintending archaeological chemist, ASI, says the ASI’s chemical branch has submitted a proposal for a step-by-step application of the mud-pack on the arches and ...

Vijay Upadhyay Agra. Medicine students often follow a monotonous routine of studying day in and day out for five years before they graduate. But an attempt to break this monotony in true 'Munnabhai style' cost three medical students dearly, when they were caught filming their sexual escapades with a call-girl they had called into their hostel room at the Sarojini Naidu Medical College in Agra. The students were suspended from the college following the recommendations of an inquiry committee hastily setup by the college administration, but not before the irate docs released the 4-minute clip as an MMS, making it a hot-selling property in the local porn market. Talking to Sunday Pioneer, college principal NC Prajapati said three students of the 2001, 2002 and 2004 batches together with a medical graduate practicing elsewhere smuggled a callgirl into the college hostel in their car last Thursday. These students were caught red-handed by the college proctors upon the complaint of ...

VIJAY UPADHYAY Agra. A week after he was thrown down from the college building roof by seniors, Abdul Wahab, a second- year engineering student at the Anand Engineering College in Agra will now undergo a spinal surgery this week. Taking steps to identify the seniors who threw the student from the roof, the Agra police has asked the college administration to prepare photographic profiles of all its students in digital format, that can be shown to Abdul on a laptop to enable him to identify his assailants. On Thursday evening, the police picked up some college officials including the principal for interrogation, but they had to be released soon, in the face of strong pressure from local bureaucrats. Wahab, a resident of Meerut, had recently joined the B.Tech course at the college. When Abdul threatened to complain about this to the college director, he was thrown off the third floor and left to die on the ground. Some college students who were passing that way got him adm...