A fire broke out at a Lord Ganesh pandal in Pune where BJP president J P Nadda was offering prayers along with the party’s Maharashtra unit chief Chandrashekhar Bawankule on Tuesday evening.
Visuals from the scene showed Nadda being safely escorted out of the venue even as the fire engulfed the top portion of the makeshift pandal in the Lokmanya Nagar area in the heart of the city.
No casualty was reported in the incident.
A fire brigade official said the blaze may have been caused by fireworks at the pandal set up by the Sane Guruji Ganesh Mitra Mandal.
The incident took place at 5.25 am in the shop located in Pooja Heights building at Purna Nagar in Chikhli area of Pimpri Chinchwad, officials said.
Credit: PTI Videograb
Four members of a family, including two minors, were killed after a fire broke out at an electric hardware shop in Pimpri Chinchwad town of Maharashtra’s Pune district on Wednesday morning, fire officials said.
VIDEO | Several people dead in a fire that broke out due to short circuit in an electronics and hardware store in Pune in the wee hours of Wednesday. More details are awaited.
The incident took place at 5.25 am in the shop located in Pooja Heights building at Purna Nagar in Chikhli area of Pimpri Chinchwad, they said.
“So far, bodies of four people, who were sleeping on the mezzanine of the hardware shop located on the building’s ground floor, have been recovered,” a fire official from the Pimpri Chinchwad Municipal Corporation said.
The blaze has been extinguished and cooling process is on, he said.
Officials said a short-circuit may have caused the fire. However, an investigation is on, they added The deceased have been identified as Chimnaram Chowdhary (48), Namrata Chimnaram Chowdhary (40), Bhavesh Chowdhary (15) and Sachin Choudhary (13), the officials said.
Representative image of real estate. Credit: iStock Photo
The consultancy’s affordability index tracked the EMI (equated monthly instalment) to income ratio for an average household in the top eight cities of India.
Amid higher home loan interest rates, Ahmedabad, followed by Pune and Kolkata topped the charts in terms of real estate affordability during the first half of 2023, according to a new report released by property consultancy Knight Frank India on Wednesday. The consultancy’s affordability index tracked the EMI (equated monthly instalment) to income ratio for an average household in the top eight cities of India.
“Higher home loan rates have reduced affordability across all markets so far in 2023,” the report highlighted. In order to tame inflation, the Reserve Bank of India increased its base lending rate (to banks)- repo rate -by 250 basis points during FY23 to 6.5 per cent currently. Accordingly home loan interest rates have risen to even breach the 8.5 per cent mark in some cases. “This has impacted affordability by an average of 2.5 per cent across cities and increased the EMI load by 14.4 per cent since then,” the report noted.
However, overall demand has remained unimpaired, with the mid and premium housing segments leading the market. Home buyers in the affordable segment (under Rs 50 lakh) have a higher dependence on home loans and are therefore more sensitive to rate hikes, the report reasoned.
“The mid and premium segments in the residential market have been consistently outperforming and points to a significant shift in the market’s underlying fabric,” said Knight Frank India Chairman and Managing Director Shishir Baijal, adding that while the market has remained strong thus far, further interest rate increases could put pressure on homebuyer ability and sentiments.”
