PIR PANJAL RAILWAY TUNNEL

The Pir Panjal Railway Tunnel or Banihal railway tunnel is a 11.215 km (7 mile) railway tunnel located in Pir Panjal Range of middle Himalayas in Jammu and Kashmir, India north of Banihal town. It is India's longest and Asia's second longest railway tunnel. It is below the existing road tunnel, the Jawahar Tunnel. The tunnel has been constructed by HCC for IRCON , a PSU , as a part of its Udhampur-Srinagar-Baramulla rail link project with a cost of 1672 crores.

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and United Progressive Alliance chairperson Sonia Gandhi flagged off the first train from Banihal, a town in Ramban district of the Jammu region, to Qazigund in the Kashmir valley, passing through a tunnel in the Pir Panchal range on june 26.

They enjoyed the 12-minute ride to Qazigund with 100 students, mostly girls, of the Banihal Higher Secondary School, and made the 17.8-km ride back to Banihal, passing through the tunnel, the second longest in Asia. Those who accompanied them were Governor N.N. Vohra, Chief Minister Omar Abdullah, Railway Minister Mallikarjun Kharge and Union Health Minister Ghulam Nabi Azad.

The train services will be run between Banhilal-Baramulla    in north Kashmir from june 27.

INDIA ABROAD PERSON OF THE YEAR

India Abroad is a weekly newspaper published from New York City, which focuses on Indian news meant for an Indian American, Indian diaspora and expatriate audience. The publication is known for its annual award ceremony for the "India Abroad Person of the Year."

India Abroad was founded by Indian American publisher Gopal Raju in 1970. India Abroad calls itself "the oldest Indian newspaper published in North America. The Economist, a British weekly international affairs magazine, referred to India Abroad as a daily publication of “unusually high quality”.

Since 2002, the publication has been honoring Indian-American achievers at the annual India Abroad Person of the Year award ceremony. The following are the list of winners.

Year
2002	Swati Dandekar	politician
2003	Sonal Shah	founder, Indicorps
2004	Mohini Bhardwaj	Olympic gymnast and silver medalist
2005	Bobby Jindal	politician
2006	Indra Nooyi	CEO, PepsiCo
2007	Mira Nair	filmmaker
2008	Fareed Zakaria	journalist, author, and television host
2009	Venkatraman Ramakrishnan	scientist, Nobel Prize winner in Chemistry for 2009
2010	Nikki Haley	politician
2011	Preet Bharara	United States Attorney
2012	Ami Bera	US Congressman
	Raj Shah	USAID Administrator

     Amerish B. "Ami" Bera is an American physician who has been the U.S. Representative for California's 7th congressional district since 2013. He is the Indian American to be elected to the US congress. Bera was hounersed Indian Abroad Person of the year 2012 along with Rajiv “Raj” Shah (born March 9, 1973) is an American economic development specialist and physician who is currently the Administrator of the United States Agency for International Development (USAID).

       Legal Activist and the youngest daughter of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh Amrit Singh received the India abroad publisher’s special award for excellence 2012. Amrit is senior legal officer for national security and counterterrorism at the Open Society Justice Initiative based at the New York. Amrit Singh was given the award at the event organized by India Abroad on 21 June 2013 for her report Globalizing Torture: CIA Secret Torture and Extraordinary Rendition released in February 2013.

The report stated that 54 nations comprising Pakistan helped the US in its war against al-Qaida by hosting CIA prisons on their territories and detaining, interrogating and torturing terror suspects

RANADHURJAYA’S

• Also called SriRamaKhasyapa gothraja’s

• Source of history are Thandivada and Gollapalli (virija nagara) inscriptions. Both are in odisha.

• Capital: Pistapuram

Ranadhurjaya

First king, dynasty name come from him.

Randhurjaya is contemporary (samantha) to Madhava Varma of Vishnukundin.

Ruled pistapuram (pitapuram).

His son is Vikramendra.

Issued Virija inscription.

Prithvi Maharaja

Son of vikramendra.

He was defeated by Pulakeshin II in kolleti war (kunala/kolleru). Source is mutnuru inscription.