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...

Vijay Upadhyay Agra. It is often said that "too many cooks spoil the broth" and, according to BJP president Rajnath Singh, this is what is happening with the country's economy, which is being torn to shreds by three "top economists" of the country - Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, Finance Minister P Chidambaram and Planning Commission Chairman Montek Singh Ahluwalia. Addressing his first rally in the Ramlila grounds of Agra on Sunday after he assumed the leadership of the BJP, which is also being seen as the first pre-poll declaration of the party's readiness to go into election mode in UP, party chief Rajnath Singh said the country was being dragged into a void by the Congress-led UPA Government. He said it had created a history in economic mismanagement by its awry policies and resulted in the worst foodgrains crisis in the past ten years at a time when the country could have been comfortably self-reliant in foodgrains and other essential commoditi...

Vishal Sharma New Delhi/ Agra. Following the recent directions of the central excise department to the Agra shoe manufacturers to indicate maximum retail price (MRP) mandatory on shoe packets, before they were made available to retailers, small-scale footwear manufacturers have decided to oppose this, even if that means shutting down their business. On Thursday, the Agra Shoe Factors Federation was on a strike, comprising footwear manufacturers and retailers of the town, against the directives and later held a meeting where it was indicated that the footwear manufacturers may take legal action. Later, talking to media persons, Raj Kumar Sama, president, Agra Shoe Factors Federation, said the MRP issue would have negligible effect on the large footwear manufactures of the town as most of them manufactured footwear for export, and the order was applicable only for footwear meant for domestic sales, either through retail shops or bulk sales. According to Sama, most of the footwear ...

Vijay Upadhyay Agra. The Agra Police have come up with a unique mode of investigation, following the latest threats to blow up the Taj Mahal and a Jain Temple on Aug15. The police had received some letters allegedly written by Mohd Mirza, an operative of the terrorist organisation Al-Qaida. The local police have come up with a unique mode of investigating the identity of the "miscreants" who wrote this letter to create nation-wide panic. Even though the local police have declared the threat letters to have been written by local mischief mongers, no terrorist organisation or the Intelligence Bureau has taken the matter seriously enough for the Dy. Director IB Shiv Vardhan Singh to make a trip down to Agra, just to check upon the security arrangements of the Taj Mahal. On Wednesday, Shiv Vardhan Singh visited the Taj Mahal in the afternoon and went through the security arrangements available at the Taj in detail. He recommended that the cloak room and ticket counters bui...

Vishal Sharma New Delhi/ Agra. Agra is about to witness a major change in its industrial profile with major software manufacturers like Microsoft beginning to pay more attention to it. This August, Microsoft is going to host the worldwide finals of the prestigious Imagine Cup in Agra for the first time in the four years of the beginning of this competition. According to Sheila Gulati, director, developer and platform evangelism, Microsoft India, Imagine Cup was a global student competition that served as a platform for students from across the world to showcase their software development skills, empowering them to apply their creativity, knowledge and technical abilities towards making the world a better place through technology, and to encourage students to develop applications which are relevant in today’s context. Gulati said the Imagine Cup Worldwide Finals would be held at Agra from August6 to 11, 2006 and contestants would have the opportunity to win cash prizes totaling up to $...

Vijay Upadhyay Agra. After stripping vehicles off their 'designation plates' - including those which proclaimed the State's top politicians, bureaucrats and police officials -- in a special drive last week, the Uttar Pradesh Transport Department is now seeking legal opinion on the applicability of this order on the armed forces' vehicles. Talking to The Pioneer, UP transport commissioner RP Shukla said that while hearing a writ petition on correct implementation of traffic rules in the State, the High Court of Uttar Pradesh had passed an order asking the Transport Department to ensure vehicles plying on the streets of the State fully complied with the Central Motor Vehicles (3rd Amendment) Rules 2000. The Central Motor Vehicles (3rd Amendment) Rules 2000 include installation of correct format vehicle number plates - and forbids all other types of designation plates -- fitted on either Government or private vehicles. Following this order, he said, the Transport...

Vijay Upadhyay Agra. The prices of sugar may have been skyrocketing in the country over the past few months, but for the newspaper readers of Agra, sugar prices are something they hardly need to worry about. The media competition induced by the entry of a new Hindi newspaper in Agra has brought a shower of freebies being offered by the two leading Hindi dailies of the town, including "free sugar", being distributed all over the town by these newspapers on the tunes of remix music with "no lucky draws" to participate. This month, with the launch of the local edition of Dainik Hindustan in Agra, the readership battle between the two leading dailies of the town - Dainik Jagran and Amar Ujala - has suddenly grown stronger, having developed a third dimension in the form of the new entrant Hindustan that has been offering free copies of the newspaper to the readers of its two competitors. Wary of the sudden warmed-up competition due to the entry of Hindustan in th...

Vijay Upadhyay Agra. When Seema and Shanti (names changed) disappeared from their home, their parents would never have imagined that these two young girls would surface two years later married to men old enough to be their father. The ordeal that these two young girls, aged 10 and 12 years, faced in the period that they were missing would be hard to comprehend, What is equally difficult to understand is the fact that these two girls had been living in Agra since the past two years with their so called husbands and the police did not make any attempts to search for them despite repeated complaints by the their brother to the Deputy Inspector General of Police Agra and Firozabad MP, Ramji Lal Suman. Abducted from their home by a distant relative and sold for Rs. 1 lac each to two middle-aged men, both Seema and Shanti had been raped repeatedly over the past two years by their 'husbands' and were being forced to live as' married' women when Ajit, the 14-year-ol...

Vijay Upadhyay Agra. Barely a couple of days before his arrival in Agra for probably the largest public meeting of his current tenure, UP Chief Minister Mulayam Singh Yadav has come close to being ditched by his principal ally in the Government - Rashtriya Lok Dal - with a Minister in his Cabinet declaring an open feud against him. On Thursday, Minister of State for Food Processing in the Mulayam Singh Government from the RLD quota Babulal held an open meeting and dharna at the Agra Collectorate with thousands of his supporters and declared a halla bol against the State Government, claiming that the RLD quota ministers were being sidelined by the Chief Minister. He also alleged that they were being subjected to disgrace by the local administration of their constituency despite the fact that the RLD was the principal ally and "king maker" of the State Government whose support was crucial for the government to remain in power. Announcing his objection to the "Yadav-centr...

Vishal Sharma New Delhi/ Agra. After a three-month slump, the computer trade in Agra and nearby towns is finally showing signs of revival, with sales picking up. Branded personal computer (PC) companies like Intel, HCL, Compaq, Lenovo. have launched promotional packages to cash in on this boost in the PC market in Agra region. According to the estimates, the PC market was expected to grow by more than 50 per cent in the Agra region during the current month and it can maintain a steady growth rate in the coming 6-8 months, peaking at over 150 per cent of the total PC sales in the months of May and June. City Computers Pvt Ltd Director Parvinder Basu said the PC market grew at 70-100 per cent each year and this year too it was expected that in the next six months the Agra market alone would place a demand for at least 3,000 PCs and laptops. Even from the neighbouring cities of Mathura, Aligarh, Firozabad, etc demand for another 1,000 PCs was expected. He said in a small-town ...