Demolish Delhi Jama Masjid, hang me if idols are not found: Sakshi Maharaj

New Delhi, Jan 28: Kolkata Metro Rail Corp expects to complete its East-West project, which runs partly under the city’s iconic Hooghly river, by March 2022 after a delay of several years doubled costs.

The authority is awaiting a final installment of Rs 20 crore ($2.8 million) over the next two years from the Indian Railway Board, said Manas Sarkar, managing director at KMRC. A soft loan of Rs 4,160 crore from Japan International Cooperation Agency helps fund 48.5% of the project.

India’s oldest metro, which started in 1984 with a North-South service, was due to expand by 2014 but faced problems including squatters on the planned route. These issues have contributed to the total project cost rising to about Rs 8,600 crore for some 17 kilometers from Rs 4,900 crore for 14 km.

“About 40% of total transport demand will be tackled by these two metro services,” Sarkar said in an interview at his office in Kolkata. “It will be a relief for environmental pollution and the city should be much more decongested.”

The new line is expected to carry about 900,000 people daily, -- roughly 20% of the city’s population -- and will take less than a minute to cross a 520-meter underwater tunnel. Depending on the time of day, it takes some 20 minutes to use the ferry and anywhere upward of an hour to cross the Howrah bridge.

KMRC will repay the JICA loan over 30 years after an initial six-year moratorium. The interest rate is between 1.2% to 1.6%. The East-West metro project is 74% owned by the railway ministry and 26% by the ministry of housing and urban affairs.

“We don’t anticipate any further cost escalation now,” Sarkar said.

New Delhi, Feb 12: The Centre on Wednesday said the NRC data in Assam is safe even though some technical issues were visible and that will be resolved soon.

The Union Home Ministry clarification came in view of reports that data of the final list of the National Register of Citizens has been made offline from its official website.

"The NRC data is safe. Some technical issues are in visibility on cloud. These are being resolved soon," a home ministry spokesperson said.

The data was not available for a couple of days and it created panic in the public, mostly among the people excluded from the list as the rejection certificates were yet to be issued.

NRC State Coordinator Hitesh Dev Sarma accepted that the data has been made offline, but refuted the allegation of any "malafide" intent in it.

The cloud service for the huge set of data was provided by IT firm Wipro and their contract was till October 19 last year. However, this was not renewed by the previous coordinator.

So, the data got offline from December 15 after it was suspended by Wipro, Sarma said.

He said the state coordination committee had decided to do necessary formalities in its meeting on January 30 and wrote to the Wipro during the first week of February.

"Once Wipro makes the data live, it will be available for public. We hope people will be able to access it in the next 2-3 days," Sarma said.

The complete detail of exclusion and inclusion of bonafide Indian citizens in the NRC was uploaded on its official website http://www.nrcassam.nic.in after the final list was published on August 31, 2019.

The final NRC was published by excluding 19,06,657 persons. A total of 3,11,21,004 names were included out of 3,30,27,661 applicants.

After the earlier NRC State Coordinator Prateek Hajela relinquished the charge on November 11 following his transfer to home state Madhya Pradesh on a direction from the Supreme Court, Sarma was appointed in his place on November 9.

New Delhi, May 4: The country's manufacturing sector activity witnessed unprecedented contraction in April amid national lockdown restrictions, following which new business orders collapsed at a record pace and firms sharply reduced their staff numbers, a monthly survey said on Monday.

The headline seasonally adjusted IHS Markit India Manufacturing Purchasing Managers' Index (PMI) fell to 27.4 in April, from 51.8 in March, reflecting the sharpest deterioration in business conditions across the sector since data collection began over 15 years ago.
The index slipped into contraction mode, after remaining in the growth territory for 32 consecutive months.

In PMI parlance, a print above 50 means expansion, while a score below that denotes contraction.

Amid widespread business closures, demand conditions were severely hampered in April. New orders fell for the first time in two-and-a-half years and at the sharpest rate in the survey's history, far outpacing that seen during the global financial crisis, the survey said.

"After making it through March relatively unscathed, the Indian manufacturing sector felt the full force of the coronavirus pandemic in April," said Eliot Kerr, Economist at IHS Markit.
Panellists attributed lower production to temporary factory closures that were triggered by restrictive measures to limit the spread of COVID-19.

Export orders also witnessed a sharp decline. Following the first reduction since October 2017 during March, foreign sales fell at a quicker rate in April. "In fact, the rate of decline accelerated to the fastest since the series began over 15 years ago," the survey said.

On the employment front, deteriorating demand conditions saw manufacturers drastically cut back staff numbers in April. The reduction in employment was the quickest in the survey's history.

"In the latest survey period, record contractions in output, new orders and employment pointed to a severe deterioration in demand conditions.
“Meanwhile, there was evidence of unprecedented supply-side disruption, with input delivery times lengthening to the greatest extent since data collection began in March 2005," Kerr said.

On the prices front, both input costs and output prices were lowered markedly as suppliers and manufacturers themselves offered discounts in an attempt to secure orders.

Going ahead, sentiment regarding the 12-month outlook for production ticked up from March's recent low on hopes that demand will rebound once the COVID-19 threat has diminished and lockdown restrictions eased.

"There was a hint of positivity when looking at firms' 12-month outlooks, with sentiment towards future activity rebounding from March's record low. That said, the degree of optimism remained well below the historical average," Kerr said.

In India, the death toll due to COVID-19 rose to 1,373 and the number of cases climbed to 42,533 as on Monday, according to the health ministry.

Meanwhile, the coronavirus-induced lockdown has been extended beyond May 4, for another two weeks in the country.