Posts Tagged ‘Lucknow’
Written by admin on 17 May 2012
Lucknow, May 17 (IANS) The Uttar Pradesh government Thursday released a road map – ‘Samagra Vikas’ – for overall development of the state, which aims to fulfil promises made by the Samajwadi Party (SP) in the recent state assembly elections.
The long-term agenda of the vision document is aimed at better facilitation in departments where the public interface is maximum, an official told IANS.
The key sectors highlighted in the document include agriculture, industries, power, education, health, social welfare and some 100 points on which state departments have been asked to “react and deliberate upon.”
Officials say the focus of the document is to assimilate the promises made by the SP into governance so that these are implemented in a phased manner.
To ensure that the agenda points of developments are being implemented in true letter and spirit, Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav would be holding quarterly review meetings wherein all projects and schemes would be discussed threadbare, according to officials.
The document specifically focuses on achieving revenue targets so that the funds can be utilised for various welfare and developmental projects. For the year 2012-13, the government has set a target of Rs.73,000 crore through revenue mobilisation.
The government is also working on a new and “all-inclusive and fair” agriculture policy, which it says would be on the lines of the 2005 agriculture policy initiated by the previous SP government.
Food processing and potato production are the key focus areas in the new policy, officials pointed out. Besides, issuing Kisan credit cards to farmers and strengthening the cooperative banks system in the state is also high on the agenda of the government, an official said.
The 2004 industrial policy will be reviewed and the government is likely to announce a host of incentives for the industrial sector in the state, the official added.
The government has cleared the way for more public-private partnership projects in the state and construction work would soon be started on the Agra-Lucknow Expressway and the northern peripheral road in Ghaziabad, a government spokesman said.
According to officials, the power sector will soon be prioritised and projects in Panki, Jawaharpur, Aanpara-D, Harduaganj extension and Obra-C would be completed in a set time frame.
In the health sector, priority would be accorded to vaccination campaigns, besides opening of state medical colleges and intensive care units in many districts across the state, officials said.
- Indo-Asian News Service
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Tags: Lucknow, Uttar Pradesh
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Written by admin on 17 May 2012
Lucknow, May 17 (IANS) Wildlife experts and foresters are working with the Uttar Pradesh government to set up a conservation centre for vultures, whose population has drastically fallen in India.
The state forest department, the Bombay Natural History Society and the Katerniaghat Foundation are working out details of the project, Vulture Safe Zone.
The project in the Terai region will be funded by the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds, an official said Wednesday.
Speaking at a seminar here, foresters said their aim was to restore the vulture population to ensure that ecological balance was maintained. They called vultures a vital part of the animal kingdom.
Vultures were once one of the most commonly sighted birds in India and neighbouring countries. Their numbers have been falling dangerously since the 1990s in India.
Experts mainly blame pesticide poisoning for this. According to published accounts, the fall in vulture population in 2000-07 was about 44 percent.
Tags: Lucknow
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Written by admin on 17 May 2012
Lucknow, May 17 (IANS) In yet another evidence of the rampant criminalisation of Uttar Pradesh and their brazen functioning, suspected criminals ran a truck over a police sub-inspector in Deoria district, killing him and critically injuring a police constable, police said.
The incident took place late Wednesday night when a small police team was checking vehicles near the Phulwaria Chauraha in Deoria district, some 290 km from here.
According to police, Sub-Inspector Uday Pratap Singh while checking vehicles got suspicious on a truck and signalled the driver to slow down. The driver, however increased the speed of the vehicle and ran over the sub-inspector. Another cop standing on the road was also hit.
The truck, which was going from Salempur to Bihar, sped away. The injured sub-inspector and the constable were rushed to a nearby medical facility, Station Officer Bhatparrani Gopal Tripathi told IANS.
Instructions were issued to forward posts on the border to intercept the truck and arrest the driver. The truck driver however has crossed over to Bihar, Tripathi added.
Officials also have begun exploring on the apparent ‘consignment’ the truck was carrying that triggered panic and killing of the cop.
Tags: Lucknow
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Written by admin on 16 May 2012
Lucknow, May 16 (IANS) Are the soaring prices of what is called Indian Made Foreign Liquor (IMFL) forcing many whiskey lovers in Uttar Pradesh to switch to locally brewed liquor, known locally as ‘tharra’?
Excise officials say this may be a “temporary taste switchover”, but industry insiders point out that the prices of IMFL have witnessed more than Rs.20-25 hike per quarter bottle.
Conservative estimates of the last month show that the shift has been drastic in some places, with as many as 13-15 percent IMFL users going for the countrymade variety, an official told IANS.
“Ab to bada mushkil hai, shaam ko thoda gam galak kar lete they, ab to mehengai ne wahan bhi grahan laga diya hai. (It is very tough now, we used to be happy for a few hours in the evening but now price rise has spiked that too),” said Abhinav Srivastava, a bank executive and a regular drinker.
The price hike, sources say, was a direct result of the revision of the excise department’s revenue targets by the Samajwadi Party (SP) government, which soon after its coronation had begun to eye the lucrative liquor market to spruce up the bleeding coffers.
The Akhilesh Yadav government has set a whopping Rs.10,070 crore target for the state excise department for the current financial year.
State Excise Commissioner Mahesh Gupta ruled out the switch to tharra as a trend and said there might be stray incidents in some pockets.
“This is unlikely to be a trend; it may be the case only in certain places rather than being a pan-Uttar Pradesh phenomenon,” Gupta said.
Officials say this shift is largely restricted to ‘fringe elements’ – people who enjoyed IMFL but were traditionally country liquor drinkers.
“There is a shift, no doubt, but then we have to see these were people from the middle class who would enjoy IMFL not just because they liked it but also because it came cheap,” averred an official.
A look at the rates of IMFL clearly shows a steep hike in the prices of major brands – Green label, McDowell No.1, Teachers, Blenders Pride, 8 PM and Bagpiper – by about 20-25 percent. This translates into an increase of Rs.125 per bottle.
The new excise revenue target is Rs.2,000 crore above the target achieved last year under the previous Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) government.
The government has also fixed the revenue and tax it plans to levy on each bottle of beer, IMFL and countrymade liquor. The maximum target is for Lucknow, which has been assigned a lion’s share of Rs.614 crore.
The industrial hub of Kanpur has been set a target of Rs.577 crore followed closely by the Taj city of Agra with a revenue target of Rs.514 crore.
Orders have been issued to officials to ensure meeting of the targets assigned to them. Excise officials have also been asked to inform the district magistrates and divisional commissioners of the targets.
Lucknow, with an ever-growing number of alcohol lovers, has emerged as a frontrunner district for the state excise department. It is for this reason that the state capital has been given a target of Rs.50 crore per month. Kanpur comes second and Ghaziabad third while Agra is fourth and Meerut fifth in terms of revenue generation. The lowest excise revenue targets have been given to Shrawasti (Rs.13.3 crore) and Kaushambi (Rs.16.45 crore) districts.
(Mohit Dubey can be contacted at mohit.d@ians.in)
Tags: Lucknow, Uttar Pradesh
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Written by admin on 16 May 2012
Lucknow, May 16 (IANS) Days after Amitabh Bachchan wrote off the debts of 90 farmers in Maharashtra’s Vidarbha region, those in Uttar Pradesh’s Bundelkhand area have written to the Bollywood star in the hope that he would do the same for them.
In a letter to Bachchan, the Bundelkhand Kisan Sangharsh Samiti (BKSS) has reminded the star he comes from Uttar Pradesh and that debt ridden farmers of Bundelkhand were looking to him to come to their rescue.
Ram Surat Chaudhary, BKSS president, said Bachchan was known to be a kind hearted man and it was heartening for the farmer community that he had come to the rescue of their debt-ridden comrades in Vidarbha.
“Amitabh-ji hails from Uttar Pradesh and we are sure that the pain and plight of the farmers in his homeland would not miss him and he would chip in with help,” Chaudhary told IANS.
He said the situation in Bundelkhand was no different from Vidarbha. It was for this reason, he said, that they had written to the actor, seeking financial help to write off the debts of the farmers.
In the letter, likely to be sent Wednesday, the farmers pointed out how they were being pressurised by private money lenders and some banks, forcing some farmers to commit suicide.
The umbrella body of farmers also made a fervent appeal to the state government led by Akhilesh Yadav to come to their help.
Bachchan had last Saturday given cheques to 90 farmers in Maharashtra’s Wardha district to repay their debt.
Cheques would be delivered at the homes of 24 other needy farmers.
The farmers were selected from over 20 villages of the district by members of the Rotary Club of Gandhi City Wardha and Rotary Club of Mumbai. The cheques total around Rs.30 lakh, all of which was donated by Bachchan.
Tags: Lucknow, Uttar Pradesh
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Written by admin on 15 May 2012
Lucknow, May 15 (IANS) In the biggest reshuffle till date on a single day, the Uttar Pradesh government Tuesday transferred a whopping 20,324 constables.
Officials said the transfers were ordered following a government order of March 20 wherein the new Samajwadi Party government had lifted the ban on posting of constables in areas adjoining their home town.
Following the policy reversal, the Uttar Pradesh Police had set rolling a phased option scheme for the constabulary.
The policemen were asked to submit with the police headquarters three options of their choice for preferred posting.
Inspector General of Police (Establishment) Sandeep Salunke, who oversaw the whole process, told IANS that the exercise was challenging since it involved balancing the aspirations of the constables while not disturbing the strength on the field at the district level.
The scheme is likely to create goodwill for the two-month-old Akhilesh Yadav government since it comes in complete contrast to the policy during the BSP regime when constables were barred from serving near their home districts.
In the Monday reshuffle, 17,131 constables have been posted in the first choice, 1,444 in their second choice and 971 have been sent to posting of their third choice.
Constables and head constables who preferred moving out of their home zones and regions have also been accomodated in places of their choice, an official said.
Another high-point of this large scale transfers is the fact that for none of the postings, constables were asked to come to the headquarter and all transfer requests were disposed off online.
Tags: Lucknow
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