Delhi Metro to introduce 131 new trains

Delhi Metro will add 131 more trains, some of them with six coaches, to its fleet to cater to the additional traffic caused due to the increasing number of passengers.

"The Delhi Metro Rail Corporation has ordered 131 more trains to cater to the additional traffic," DMRC spokesman Anuj Dayal said.

He said some of the these trains sets would have six coaches on those stretches which are very crowded.

The number of passengers using Delhi Metro services crossed eight lakhs mark on Monday and yesterday for the first time, Dayal said, adding that ridership on Monday was 8.05 lakh and yesterday it was 8.14 lakh.

The new trains are currently being manufactured and will be pressed into service as soon as they are ready, he said.

The earning of the Delhi Metro from passengers revenue was around Rs 90 lakh per day on Monday and yesterday consequently, Dayal said.

The average daily ridership on Delhi Metro has been 7.26 lakh this month.


source :
http://www.zeenews.com/

India goes on alert as further city bombings feared

MAJOR INDIAN cities were on alert yesterday, anticipating further attacks after two successive days of serial bombings that ripped through a communally-sensitive western city and an information technology hub in the south, killing 51 people.

"The entire nation has been asked to step up security at vital installations", a federal home ministry spokesman said following bomb attacks at Ahemdabad in Gujarat state on Saturday evening and in the country's software capital, Bangalore, 24 hours earlier.

Police said 16 bombs exploded within one hour in the evening in Ahemdabad's teeming bazaars, congested neighbourhoods and hospitals tending to the injured in the affluent and Muslim-dominated city, killing 49 people, including women and children and wounding over 160 others.

Containing ammonium nitrate, gelatine sticks and ball-bearings, the bombs were strapped to bicycles and motorcycles, secreted inside lunch boxes and under seats in crowded public buses and detonated with timers at staggered intervals.

Ahemdabad police commissioner OP Mathur said an unexploded bomb had been found in the city and two others in the nearby diamond-cutting centre of Surat, and defused. Around 30 people, he said, had been detained for questioning but declined to elaborate.

The plan behind the meticulously planned bombings. federal home minister Shivraj Patil said. was to trigger communal strife between the majority Hindus and Muslims in the normally turbulent city. He appealed for calm.

The little-known "Indian Mujahideen" or Islamic warriors group claimed responsibility for the Ahmedabad attack in a lengthy e-mail to television news channels minutes before the first bomb exploded at about 6.30pm on Saturday. It declared the bombings were to avenge the month-long pogrom in 2002 in Gujarat in which over 2,500 people, mostly Muslims, were killed by rampaging Hindu mobs.

Gujarat chief minister Narendra Modi, of the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), one of India's most controversial politicians, was accused by human rights activists and MPs of connivance in the riots, for which the US has refused to issue him a visa.

The BJP was also in power in Bangalore, capital of Karnataka province, where eight bombs exploded in under an hour on Friday, killing two people and paralysing the hi-tech city that caters to multinational software companies and western financial institutions.

Earlier, "Indian Mujahideen" claimed responsibility for the serial bombings that killed 63 people in the western tourist city of Jaipur - also ruled by the BJP - in May and in northern Uttar Pradesh state last November in which 10 others died.

In a similar document sent minutes before the Jaipur bombings to TV channels, the "Indian Mujahideen" stated the attack was in retaliation to India supporting the US and Britain on "international issues" and warned that if this alliance continued, more strikes would follow.

Indian and western security officials, however, claimed the "Indian Mujahideen" was a "smokescreen" for Muslim militant groups based in neighbouring Bangladesh and Pakistan with the aim of fomenting sectarian tension in India. They said these groups had long been fighting India's control over the disputed Kashmir province, its recent regional and global economic status and its strategic and defence co-operation with the West, especially the US.

Federal Intelligence Bureau sources said the attacks demonstrated the capability of the foreign insurgent groups to strike "anywhere" and at "anytime" across India by using disaffected Muslims as "carriers". Some 13 per cent of India's population of more than 1.2 billion is Muslim.

In excess of 550 people have died in 11 well-co-ordinated terrorist attacks across India since October 2005. None of them had been solved so far and no arrests made.

The first round of Ahemdabad's bombings took place near busy markets, followed by explosions some 25 minutes later in and around two hospitals where the injured were being rushed.

A doctor, his three-month pregnant wife and another doctor were killed in explosions at two adjoining hospitals within a two-mile radius. "Never before have we seen such ruthless bombings of hospitals. The terrorists' objective was to strike the defenceless and deepen the fear," a senior security official said.

"I came with my two children to cheer up my mother admitted to hospital," said Pankaj Patel, whose son Rohan and daughter Pratha were killed at Ahmedadad hospital. They were laughing when the blast occurred.

Army troops patrolled Ahemdabad, and police and paramilitary personnel were deployed across the city to prevent the outbreak of any sectarian violence.

source : http://www.irishtimes.com/

Mumbai is the costliest Indian city

Strengthening rupee and growing aspirational demand has made four Indian cities — Delhi, Mumbai, Bangalore and Chennai — increasingly expensive for expatriates to live in, a latest global survey says.

Moscow has emerged as the most expensive city for the third consecutive year, according to the survey conducted by global consulting firm Mercer. It is followed by Tokyo, London, Oslo and Seoul, the top five cities in the 'Worlwide Cost of Living 2008' survey.

All cities in India rose in the cost of living ranking due to strengthening of the rupee against the US dollar, with Mumbai moving to the 48th place in the March survey this year, compared to the 52nd position in the same period last year, while the national capital New Delhi climbed to the 55th place from 68th a year ago.

Chennai and Bangalore also improved their positions to 117 and 118 ranks, respectively in the survey, which comprised 143 cities globally.

Last year, Chennai had been ranked at the 133rd position, while Bangalore was at the 134th place, the survey revealed.

"Delhi, Bangalore and Chennai are racing up the ladder from a cost of living perspective, having moved up over 12 ranks from Mercer's last survey conducted six months ago," said Gangapriya Chakraverti, Mercer business leader for information product solutions, India.

"A strengthening rupee and growing but unfulfilled demand for expatriate-style housing are factors that have contributed significantly to the changes in the ranking of Indian cities," Chakraverti added.

Mercer's survey covers 143 cities across six continents and measures the comparative cost of over 200 items in each location, including housing, transport, food, clothing, household goods and entertainment.

It is a comprehensive cost of living survey and is used to help multinational companies and governments determine cost of living allowances for their expatriate employees.

Although the traditionally expensive cities of Western Europe and Asia still feature in the top 20, cities in Eastern Europe, Brazil and India are creeping up the list, while some locations such as Stockholm and New York now appear less costly by comparison, the survey revealed.

In Asia, Tokyo has emerged as the costliest city (2nd rank) followed by Seoul (5th) and Hong Kong at 6th rank. However, Karachi continues to be the least expensive city in this region holding the 141st place in the global ranking.

"Increase in rankings for cities such as Singapore and Philippines can be attributed to their highly valued quality of living and increasing attractiveness of Philippines as an alternative investment location to China and India," Mercer's Asia-Pacific Head of Information Product Solutions Neo Siew Khim said.


source :
http://www.zeenews.com/

History made at Sariska

The tiger has landed and it is a male.

Yes, after a gap of four long years the tiger made a comeback to the Sariska Tiger Reserve in Alwar district of Rajasthan on Saturday. The event made conservation history, as this is the first time the wild tiger is being re-introduced into a reserve anywhere in the country. Sariska, a sanctuary brought under Project Tiger in 1978, had lost all its tigers in 2004-05 to suspected poaching.

“It is a historic moment. The country has done it while others have failed,” announced R. N. Mehrotra, Chief Wildlife Warden of Rajasthan. “This kind of wild-to-wild re-location has not taken place anywhere else,” he said.

“The released tiger is in good shape. The operation was successful in every respect but for the small hiccups caused by the vagaries of the weather,” Mr. Mehrotra revealed.

“The effort is the first step towards successful re-establishment of tigers in Sariska,” said Rajesh Gopal, Director of the National Tiger Conservation Authority of India. The plan is to release a total of five tigers in Sariska over two years. The next tiger, a female, is expected to be released in a week while the third, also a tigress, some time in winter.

Saturday’s pick of a male tiger was a chance thing as according to the plan a female was to be introduced first.

It took 35 to 40 minutes for the operation in which the MI-17 Indian Air Force helicopter took off with a tranquillized male tiger in a custom-made cage from the Anantpura helipad inside the Ranthambhore National Park in Sawai Madhopur district to the helipad built near the Nayapani tiger holding area inside Sariska.

Apart from the dazed tiger, two experts from the Wildlife Institute of India (WII), Mr. Mehrotra, Rajpal Singh, a member of the Rajasthan’s Empowered Committee on Forests and Wildlife, flew in the helicopter, besides the six-member crew. The chopper took off at 11-45 a.m. and landed at around 12-20 p.m.

The tiger had regained consciousness by the time it was wheeled out of the helicopter to the enclosure some 200 metres away for its release. The feline walked into its new home with a kind of elegance only typical of tigers.

“In about four hours we carried out the exercise. From darting the tiger in its habitat in Ranthambhore to releasing it in Sariska everything went off with clockwork precision,” informed P. R. Sinha, Director WII, who supervised the operation along with experts from the National Tiger Conservation Authority, Rajasthan Forest Department, and World Wide Find for Nature (WWF), Ministry of Environment and Forests and the Indian Air Force.

“Sariska was a prestige issue for all involved,” Dr. Sinha said, pointing out that the problems which might have led to the extinction of the tiger population in Sariska had been looked into. “There are more things to be done. We are in the process. One village has been moved out of Sariska to everybody’s satisfaction while four more may follow suit,” he said.

Rajasthan Minister for Forests and Environment Pratap Singh Singhvi and Environment and Forests Secretary Meena Singh were witnesses to the historic occasion though the media was kept out of the scene.


source :
http://www.hindu.com/

Tatas enter budget hotel segment

After running the premium Taj hotels for decades, the Tatas have entered the budget accommodation sector. Indian Hotels’ subsidiary Roots Corp opened its first ginger property in Delhi in collaboration with Indian Railways by converting the Rail Yatri Niwas near New Delhi station into the Ginger Rail Yatri Niwas.

This hotel was built in 1988 to offer accommodation to train passengers at reasonable prices. On a PPP model, this hotel has been given to Roots Corp for 15 years on a revenue share basis. The company has renovated this place at a cost of Rs 10.5 crore and now is aiming at several other such properties in the NCR.

Roots CEO Prabhat Pani said: “My wishlist is to have five to 10 gingers in the NCR with government support in places like here, Noida, Gurgaon and Ghaziabad.”

He also added that, “If we get good support, we would like some of these properties here to become operational before the Commonwealth games in 2010.” Ginger has 12 properties across the country and this number will swell to 15 in next two months with the opening of hotels in Delhi, Goa and Ludhiana.


Source:
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/

Srilanka lift Asia Cup 2008

IT WAS the same old story for India in the Asia Cup finals. They once again faltered at the final hurdle. Srilankan spinner Ajantha Mendis casted a web around the Indian batsmen.

The Islanders victory over India was a combination of young and old. Captain Mahela Jayawardene’s judiciousness was another factor. All this combined to rout India.

On a Sunday (July 7), the mighty Srilanka defeated India by a big margin of 100 runs in Karachi. A marvellous bowling spell by Mendis wrecked the Indian order and won the match for Lanka. The splendid innings of Jayasuriya ws exceptional. His 125 included five sixes. Mendis picked six wickets and conceded only 13 runs in his eight overs.

After being set a target of 274 runs to chase for victory, India started on a confident note. The early and unlucky dismissal of Gautam Gambhir at the score of 36 gave a possibility to Srilanka. Soon after the collapse of Gambhir’s wicket, captain Mahendra Singh Dhoni sent Suresh Raina.

Even after the exit of Raina, he strategy of Indian captain did not change. That proved costly. Even at that stage, if the patient Dhoni had joined Sehwag, the result could have been different. The impatient Yuvaraj Singh was clean bowled and the hopes were shattered. The fastest Asia Cup half-century by Sehwag and the responsible innings by the captain could not save the match for India.

Pragyan Ojha did well but his spin failed to yield wickets. Had it not been for him, the Lankans might have crossed the 300-run mark. After the match, Dhoni said that his teammates could not read Mendis well and the forth coming series with Lanka would be a tough one. The Lankan captain also stated the same during the presentation ceremony.


Source:
http://www.merinews.com/