News on Agra & Current Affairs

अब आलू के इस बंपर उत्पादन से हालात यह बन रहे हैं कि किसानों को उसे कोल्ड स्टोरेज की बजाय खेतों में ही रखने को मजबूर होना पड़ रहा है। आगरा के सभी 160 स्टोरेज ने आलू को रखने से मना कर हाउसफुल का बोर्ड अपने दरवाजे पर टांग दिया है। विशाल शर्मा / आगरा उत्तर प्रदेश सरकार के अनुमान को गलत ठहराते हुए आलू क्षेत्र के नाम से मशहूर आगरा के किसानों ने आलू की इतनी पैदावार कर दी है कि उनके उत्पाद को कोल्ड स्टोरेज तक मयस्सर नहीं हो रहे। अभी ज्यादा वक्त नहीं गुजरे, तीन हफ्ते पहले की ही तो बात है राज्य के बागवानी मंत्री नारायण सिंह सुमन ने विधानसभा में कहा कि वसंत के देर होने से आलू के उत्पादन में 8 से 12 फीसदी तक की गिरावट आने का अंदेशा है। पर महज कुछ ही दिनों बाद जब आलू की फसल उखाड़ी जाने लगी तो उत्पादन में कमी के कयास सिरे से गलत साबित हो गए। जहां राज्य सरकार का अनुमान था कि इस साल आगरा क्षेत्र में 8.35 लाख मीट्रिक टन आलू उपजेगा, वहीं पूरी फसल उखड़ने से पहले ही उपज का आंकड़ा 11 लाख मीट्रिक टन को पार कर चुका है। अब आलू के इस बंपर उत्पादन से हालत यह बन रहे हैं कि किसानों को उसे कोल्ड स्टोरेज की बजाय खेतों...

Vishal Sharma   Domestic traders are opposing the 12.5 per cent VAT imposed on leather footwear.    New Delhi/Agra        Even as the footwear exporters of Agra are rejoicing at possible Italian investment in the leather footwear sector of the town, domestic footwear traders in Agra have gone on an indefinite strike from Tuesday against the 12.5 percent value added tax (VAT) proposed by the Uttar Pradesh government on leather footwear.   The strike, which encompasses almost 650 different bulk traders of footwear in the Shoe Market of Agra, is expected to cause a loss of about Rs 1 crore per day to the town's footwear trade while seriously affecting the manufacturer-trader supply chain that thrives on the daily sale volumes.   According to Rajkumar Sama, president, Agra Shoe Factors Federation (ASFF), a recent decision by the state government to bring VAT into effect in the state from December 1 has shocked the f...

VISHAL SHARMA New Delhi/ Agra.                        Having failed to draw the UP government's attention towards the pending development projects worth around Rs 60 crore for manufacturing footwear components, the Agra footwear industry is now looking at collaborating with the local foundry industry to develop ancillary units for manufacturing components like rivets, buckles, and sole dies most of which are currently imported at high cost.   Talking to Business Standard, Haji Rasheedo, owner of a small-scale footwear manufacturing unit in the Mantola area of the town, said currently the sole-dies had to be imported from China as attempts to produce quality sole-dies locally had not succeeded till date.   He said some footwear sole manufacturers, who were unable to import the sole-dies from China, were buying them from some selected die manufacturers...

VISHAL SHARMA New Delhi/ Agra.         At a time when the bicycle industry of the country is growing at almost 10 per cent annually, the export of Indian bicycles has dropped to almost half the previous year's tally owing to a huge increase in steel prices in the past three months and an unstable dollar.   For the industry that exports almost Rs 1,000 crore worth of its production, the rising steel prices have caused a tremendous drop in exports, which are presently pegged at just around Rs 423 crore.   The bicycle manufacturers of the country held a bicycle trade fair in Agra last week. The spokesperson of the United Cycle & Parts Manufacturers Association, KK Seth, said the production of steel was being monopolised by a select group of companies in India who were manipulating steel prices.   In the past three months, the steel prices had shot up by Rs 3,000 per metric tonne and now the companies were again preparing to ra...

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...

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...