News on Agra & Current Affairs

Vijay Upadhyay Agra. Seven hundred delegates of the Commonwealth Parliamentary Conference visited Agra for sight seeing on Saturday. The visit followed the conclusion of the 53rd Commonwealth Parliamentary Conference in New Delhi on Friday. The delegation reached Agra Cantonment Railway Station in the morning by a special Shatabdi train where they were received by the speaker of the Uttar Pradesh Vidhan Sabha, the Chairman of UP Vidhan Parishad and Opposition leader of UP Vidhan Sabha. On reaching, a long cavalcade of luxury buses specially arranged by the Agra administration, left for a visit of the three world heritage monuments of Agra, which, incidentally, remained closed for public throughout the day as an additional security measure for the Parliamentarians. The Agra Cantonment Railway Station also remained closed for general traffic through most of the day and passengers preferred to board their trains from other stations. Routes leading to the Taj Mahal and ot...

Vijay Upadhyay Agra. Barely a month after violence rocked Agra, communal tension sparked again in the town on Saturday after a mob stopped the recital of Akhand Ramayan at a local temple that has been going on continuously for a record 13 years here. The violence that sparked off by the alleged man-handling of the temple priest by a local ex-corporator who led the mob, injured six, including the DSP Achhnera Aseem Chowdhary. One person was injured in police firing. Agra SSP Naveen Arora said the temple at station road broadcast the recital on a speaker system installed on a tree just outside, attracting hundreds of devotees.

Vishal Sharma New Delhi/ Agra Less than a week after the Agra Cantonment Board installed its own entry tax barriers on the roads leading to the Taj Mahal and other monuments, the Agra district administration has put a firm ban on the new tax, claiming it was creating nuisance in the city and endangering the Taj Mahal from the pollution created by the vehicles crowding at the toll-tax barriers, just a couple of kilometres away from the monument. According to Agra District Magistrate Mukesh Kumar Meshram, the toll tax barriers installed by the cantonment board on September 20 were close to the Taj Mahal and were creating chaos on roads leading to the monument. This was also causing air pollution around the Taj, as was evident in a report submitted by the UP Pollution Control Board. Also, the entry tax was causing a serious law and order problem in the district because tax barriers were disturbing the normal passage of traffic through the city. Meshram said if th...

Vishal Sharma New Delhi/ Agra Following a serious setback faced by the local tourism industry after the alleged rape of two Japanese tourists, Agra became the first city in Uttar Pradesh to implement the concept of a “Tourism Police Station” on Tuesday. To be established and operated at almost Rs 7 crore per year and manned by 114 police and tourism department personnel, the police station will be permanently established close to the Taj Mahal in a couple of months. Talking to Business Standard on the occasion, Parthsarthy Sen Sharma, director general (tourism), UP, said the toll-tax paid by tourists arriving at the Taj Mahal would finance the operational costs of such a large contingent of personnel deployed throughout Agra district for the protection of the tourists. Notably, the Taj Mahal alone earns more than Rs 60 crore from toll-tax each year and it is spent in the maintenance of tourism infrastructure around the major monuments of the city. He said such incidents badly damaged ...

Vishal Sharma New Delhi/ Agra Though the UP government has approved the proposal of increasing the capacity of the Anpara C power project from 1,000 Mw to 1,200 Mw, subject to Lanco Anpara Power Pvt Ltd getting requisite clearances, there’s confusion still in the power ministry about the increased capacity. This is evident from a recent judgment by the UP Electricity Regulatory Commission (UPERC) in which it asked the UP Power Corporation Ltd to reconsider the upgrade of this project in view of the infrastructural problems that would arise in supporting the raised capacity. Meanwhile, a highly placed source in the UP Power Corporation Ltd said though the increase in capacity for Anpara C had been approved [vide UP Rajya Vidyut Utpadan Nigam Ltd (UPRVUNL) letter no. 2351/CE/PPMM/Anpara C dated 22/8/2007], LANCO Anpara Power Pvt Ltd still had to obtain the requisite permissions and clearances for the raised capacity before the 20 per cent increase was declared offic...

Vijay Upadhyay Agra. The Taj Mahal is probably the only historical building in the world which attracts an inestimable number of disputes every year. Shortly after historians raised objections on the use of mud pack on the monument for its cleaning, a descendant of the last Mughal Emperor Bahadurshah Zafar has filed a suit in an Agra court against the Archaeological Survey of India for promoting numerous self-styled committees for holding 'Urs' of Shahjahan at the Taj. The descendant claims that Shahjahan was not a 'sufi saint' and he had not left any indications in his will for such a grand annual Urs to be held at his tomb. Condemning the interference of numerous 'self-styled' Urs committees at the Taj, Prince Yakub Habibuddin Tucy, who purports to be the great grandson of the last Mughal Emperor Bahadur Shah Zafar, has requested the court to pass an immediate injunction against such committees, claiming that these committees and their office-bearers ar...

Vishal Sharma New Delhi/ Agra. Despite Agra being a major hub of footwear, engineering products, glass and handicraft industries, the exporters of the town often face problems in transporting their products from Agra to the port in Mumbai due to the shortage of the number of container trains passing through Agra, often resulting in undue delays in the shipping of consignments. Taking note of this problem, Container Corporation of India Ltd. (CONCOR) has now agreed to operate another container train for the town’s exporters, while also relenting on providing a number of other concessions to new exporters. Discussing the issue with the exporters in Agra on Wednesday, Deepak Kapoor, chief general manager, CONCOR, said the corporation was ready to run another container train for Agra by the first week of October, provided there was enough business generated from the town. He said CONCOR was also ready to extend a pre-deposit account facility to new exporters of the town in which...

Vishal Sharma New Delhi. Following a ban on diesel engine manufacture in Agra by the Central Pollution Control Board (CPCB), the diesel engine and generator manufacturing industry has come to a virtual standstill. Though most of the diesel engine manufacturers have either downed their shutters or have begun selling unassembled engines and generators, a few of the major engine manufacturers of the town have taken a step further, developing new technologies and making their engines compliant to the CPCB standards. BS Agricultural Industries recently announced the development of a completely new engine technology, which, besides being compliant with CPCB standards, also heavily economises on fuel consumption. Talking to Business Standard on this new engine, Narinder Singh, director, BS Agricultural Industries, said that the new engine had been developed by the company's own Research & Development unit and it was displaying a fuel-economy of up to 40 per cent less than the engines...

Vishal Sharma New Delhi/ Agra Even though the footwear industry in Agra has been growing at an unprecedented rate, industry analysts believe this growth rate will be short-lived, considering the acute shortage of trained labour for footwear manufacture that the industry is facing presently. There are close to 75 export-oriented footwear units currently in Agra and most of these units are facing similar problems - shortage of quality leather, lack of export facilities, unavailability of a footwear design studio and the overwhelming problem of the lack of adequate numbers of trained labour. According to the Agra Footwear Manufacturers and Exporters Chamber (AFMEC) sources, while most of the operational problems could be sorted out with ease, it was the shortage of atleast 15000 trained labourers within the current year for the export oriented units, that would ultimately pull the Agra footwear units back from the developmental track. Blaming the footwear training institutes and...

Vishal Sharma Agra Agra’s foundry industry, one of the oldest industrial clusters of the country, is dying a slow death. High costs of production, technology change and a stiff competition from big foundries is marring growth of these units, leading to their gradual phase-out. Today, there are just 200-250 foundry units functioning in the city and its industrial areas. Out of these, close to 100 are defunct due to their inability to shift to the CNG-based manufacturing process. The rest are struggling hard to make ends meet because of the high manufacturing costs required for running CNG-based furnaces. Now, the UP Pollution Control Board (UPPCB) has decided to serve closure notices to over 30 foundry units for not complying with pollution norms. A UPPCB official said, “Though a lot of foundry units have shifted to CNG, still a large number of them emit poisonous gases and violate pollution norms.” He said that a survey of all foundry units had been conducted by the board ...

Vijay Upadhyay Agra. It was the biggest case of kidnapping in the criminal history of Etah district in UP that involved a ransom of Rs 3 crores but 18 days later, after having made the biggest blunder in solving the crime, Etah Police is only left with the victim's decomposed body and an escaped criminal. As the high-profile case of seed trader Sunit Chola's abduction came to a grisly yet sad climax with the recovery of his decomposed body from a 6 feet deep pit, Etah Police's modus operandi in handling this case has left a number of questions that remain unanswered. Chola, a seed trader in Kasganj, had been kidnapped by unknown goons on August 13, who had demanded Rs 1 crore cash and 2 kg gold on a phone call to the trader's family. The call, made from Chola's mobile, was tracked down and placed under electronic surveillance by the police, revealing that Chola could be located in the ravines of Fatehpur Kalan, about 25 km away from Kasganj. Though the investigatio...

Vishal Sharma New Delhi/ Agra At a time when the tourist traffic began to show upward trend in Agra, Wednesday’s communal riot, that broke in morning, has acted as a deterrent, thus crushing down the hopes of tourism industry of having a good year ahead. With the blocking of Mahatma Gandhi road, which leads to the city, due to curfew in six police station areas, the tourist traffic into the town remained disrupted throughout the day and a number of package tours, due to arrive in Agra, are reported to have cancelled their plans following the news of the riots. Talking to Business Standard, Prahlad Agarwal, convener, Agra Foreign Tourist Traders & Exporters Association said the tourism business was highly sensitive and slightest disruption of peace in the city dissuaded the tourists from visiting a place. He said each day’s disruption in tourist traffic could cause a loss worth Rs 1crore-1.5 crore to the tourism industry in the city. He said they had been receiving...

GLOBETROTTING Vishal Sharma New Delhi/ Agra Taking steps to cater to the leather footwear demands in the South American countries, the Council for Leather Exports (CLE) has announced the opening of Leather Desk in the city of Nova Hamburgo, Brazil, to facilitate Indian leather companies to do business with Brazilian firms and expand into new markets. CLE sources at Agra said Nova Hamburgo is the leather footwear production hub and among the leaders in exports to the world. CLE, in an attempt to boost up its members, has opened this desk where companies can get an open platform to expand their business. Agra, being the hub of Indian leather sector, the desk is also a stage for the town's exporters to grab orders from the untapped western markets. Speaking about the new initiative, Mukhtarul Amin, chairman, Council for Leather Exports, said: "This is a wonderful opportunity for footwear manufacturers at Agra. Unless we look at expanding our horizon to include new ma...

Vishal Sharma New Delhi/ Agra Taking steps to minimise power theft by industrial consumers in Agra, UP power distribution company Dakshinanchal Vidyut Vitran Nigam Ltd (DVVNL) has developed a wireless automated meter reading (AMR) system, which could make the process of manual meter reading redundant. Developing a wireless solution by working in collaboration with Jaipur-based Genus Power Infrastructure Ltd (GPIL), DVVNL has begun the installation of wireless power meters at the premises of its industrial consumers that was expected to bring down both the meter reading costs and power thefts drastically. Talking to Business Standard, DVVNL Managing Director Kirpal Singh said that though cases of power thefts were found more in domestic consumers, the real loss of revenue was still due to power theft in industrial units where the discom crew could not easily enter to check the meters, and by the time they reached the place where the meter was installed, the evidence of me...

Vishal Sharma Agra State administration tells manufacturers to shift to gas burners or face closure. For a prospering industrial cluster of nearly 500 units, relocation is one of the worst nightmares. The petha manufacturers of Agra are facing exactly that prospect after having been served a month’s notice to either move to the new petha cluster established outside the city or face complete shutdown. At a meeting of petha manufacturers, Green Gas Ltd, a joint venture between GAIL (India) Ltd and IOC Ltd, the UP Pollution Control Board and city municipal officials held recently, it was decided that the Noori Gate area, which has been the hub of petha manufacturing units in Agra, will be vacated in a month and the units shifted to the Agra Development Authority’s petha cluster outside the city. “The petha units were causing a serious two-pronged pollution problem inside the city. The units released several tonnes of organic waste and smoke every day,” said Ashok Kumar Tiwari, regional o...

Vishal Sharma New Delhi/ Agra After losing its chance of being turned into an international airport, Agra has again suffered a major setback with the union aviation ministry deciding to “overfly” the city’s airport while offering Lucknow a chance to share the winter flight load of the fogged-down Delhi airport. Each year during the winters, the international airport at Delhi gets covered with fog making it hard to land flights there for several days in the season. Flights approaching Delhi during these bad conditions are often routed to nearby airports of like Jaipur, Lucknow and Ahmedabad. The larger aircraft have to be diverted to Mumbai as other airports have smaller runways unfit to land large aircraft. Some of these aircraft are also landed at Agra, which is barely 15 minutes away from Delhi. Sources claimed that as it was a part of the Agra air force base, the runways available at the Agra airport were sufficient to land even the largest of aircrafts and advanced instrumental lan...

Vishal Sharma New Delhi/ Agra Ever since it was established, the glass industry of Firozabad, a small industrial town close to Agra, has hardly seen technological changes apart some shifting from wood-fired furnaces to natural gas. Glass units depend on manual glass blowing and manufacturing techniques, which cannot ensure consistency in quality and increases costs. This has been the primary reason for the glass industry of this town failing to compete with products from China. As a step towards reducing costs, the Centre for the Improvement of Glass Industry, operated by the Union Ministry of Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises, has introduced new technology in pot furnace manufacture in the town recently. This incorporates multiple chambers developed under a glass industry development project initiated by the Centre’s Department of Science & Technology, instead of the usual furnace design using a single chamber. According to industry sources, the centre has been holding demonstr...

Vishal Sharma New Delhi/ Agra The minimum consumption guarantee dispute between the GAIL (India) Ltd and Agra industrialists has taken a serious turn. Taking steps to recover its dues worth Rs 7 crore, GAIL has served dues recovery and disconnection notices to the foundry units of Agra, demanding the payment of all dues according to the minimum guarantee agreement signed by the foundry units. Cornered by GAIL’s threats to shut down gas supply to the units, foundry unit owners of Agra and Firozabad recently held a meeting at the National Chamber of Industries & Commerce (UP) in which they decided to raise this issue before the Union petroleum ministry in Delhi on July 24. They decided to demand a waiver of the minimum guarantee due to the low consumption of natural gas in the foundry units in the absence of modern cupola furnaces. The industrialists have also decided to demand an increase in the gas quota of Agra and Firozabad from 1.1 million metric standard cubic metres per day (...

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...