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SC chides Agra forest department over wrong affidavits
New Delhi/Agra: The Supreme Court on Monday slammed Agra’s district forest department for filing affidavits with false information about the number of trees planted in the eco-sensitive Taj Trapezium Zone.
On Monday, a two-member committee presented its report to the apex court, pointing out how the state government had claimed planting 15,000 trees but on physical verification the information was found to be incorrect.
The Supreme Court had directed the Uttar Pradesh government to plant 2.58 lakh trees in stages to make up for the loss of green cover due to various developmental projects.
A bench of Justices T.S. Thakur and C. Nagappan noted: “We had some kind of hunch and our hunch has been proven correct. Money is being eaten away and no plantation is being done. It has become a fertile ground for corruption. You are not following our order on forestation.”
The bench was clearly unhappy with the casual manner in which documents had been filed with wrong information. It found a huge gap between the target and the actual number of trees planted.
The Taj Trapezium Zone spread over 10,040 sq km, is an eco-sensitive area with more than 40 ASI protected monuments including three world heritage sites.
The apex court has been monitoring the follow-up action on the directives flowing from the PIL filed by eco-lawyer M.C. Mehta way back in 1984.
Agra district forest officer Lalit Verma, who had filed the wrong affidavits in the apex court, was suspended by the state government some months ago.
Thousands of trees have been felled in the Taj Trapezium Zone for road building in past few years, but trees have not been planted as was the commitment given in the Supreme Court while seeking permission.
Thousands of trees were felled for the Yamuna Expressway. Presently thousands of trees have been chopped off for widening the Delhi-Agra national highway.
The work is in progress, but we have never been given the information where compensatory plantation work has been done, said eco-activist Shravan Kumar Singh.
“Now the state government has begun work on the Agra-Lucknow Expressway by chopping trees and cleaning up the green cover. Environmental Assessment Impact hearings have not been held and there is no idea where new green patches would be developed to compensate for the loss of trees,” said Surendra Sharma, a heritage activist in Agra.
“In Vrindavan and Goverdhan thousands of trees have disappeared making way for new cement structures. The mythologically important forests of Braj have turned grey and brown with high rise buildings,” said activist Pavan Gautam of Mathura.
International online casino Casino Days has published a report sharing their internal data on what types and brands of devices are used to play on the platform by users from the South Asian region.
Such aggregate data analyses allow the operator to optimise their website for the brands and models of devices people are actually using.
The insights gained through the research also help Casino Days tailor their services based on the better understanding of their clients and their needs.
Desktops and Tablets Lose the Battle vs Mobile
The primary data samples analysed by Casino Days reveal that mobile connections dominate the market in South Asia and are responsible for a whopping 96.6% of gaming sessions, while computers and tablets have negligible shares of 2.9% and 0.5% respectively.
The authors of the study point out that historically, playing online casino was exclusively done on computers, and attribute thе major shift to mobile that has unfolded over time to the wide spread of cheaper smartphones and mobile data plans in South Asia.
“Some of the reasons behind this massive difference in device type are affordability, technical advantages, as well as cheaper and more obtainable internet plans for mobiles than those for computers,” the researchers comment.
Xiaomi and Vivo Outperform Samsung, Apple Way Down in Rankings
Chinese brands Xiaomi and Vivo were used by 21.9% and 20.79% of Casino Days players from South Asia respectively, and together with the positioned in third place with a 18.1% share South Korean brand Samsung dominate the market among real money gamers in the region.
Cupertino, California-based Apple is way down in seventh with a user share of just 2.29%, overshadowed by Chinese brands Realme (11.43%), OPPO (11.23%), and OnePlus (4.07%).
Huawei is at the very bottom of the chart with a tiny share just below the single percent mark, trailing behind mobile devices by Motorola, Google, and Infinix.
The data on actual phone usage provided by Casino Days, even though limited to the gaming parts of the population of South Asia, paints a different picture from global statistics on smartphone shipments by vendors.
Apple and Samsung have been sharing the worldwide lead for over a decade, while current regional leader Xiaomi secured their third position globally just a couple of years ago.
Striking Android Dominance among South Asian Real Money Gaming Communities
The shifted market share patterns of the world’s top smartphone brands in South Asia observed by the Casino Days research paper reveal a striking dominance of Android devices at the expense of iOS-powered phones.
On the global level, Android enjoys a comfortable lead with a sizable 68.79% share which grows to nearly 79% when we look at the whole continent of Asia. The data on South Asian real money gaming communities suggests that Android’s dominance grows even higher and is north of the 90% mark.
Among the major factors behind these figures, the authors of the study point to the relative affordability of and greater availability of Android devices in the region, especially when manufactured locally in countries like India and Vietnam.
“And, with influencers and tech reviews putting emphasis on Android devices, the choice of mobile phone brand and OS becomes easy; Android has a much wider range of products and caters to the Asian online casino market in ways that Apple can’t due to technical limitations,” the researchers add.
The far better integration achieved by Google Pay compared to its counterpart Apple Pay has also played a crucial role in shaping the existing smartphone market trends.
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