In its 9th year, the Festival received great response from filmmakers
internationally having received a record number of 4500 film entries.
The Jagran Film Festival will start from Delhi, travelling through
Kanpur, Lucknow, Allahabad, Varanasi, Patna, Dehradun, Ranchi,
Jamshedpur, Bhopal, Indore, Gorakhpur, Agra, Ludhiana, Hisar, Meerut,
Raipur and finally culminates in Mumbai. This makes it geographically
the largest film festival perhaps in the world. The festival screens
films across genres from around the globe.

A unique feature of JFF is that the cast and crew of a few select films are invited to a discussion with the audience on various elements of the film to
wherever the Festival travels.

An important aspect of the festival is to generate discussions on the various aspects of Cinema and its impact on society and popular culture.
The Jagran Film Festival starts from 18th July in Delhi and will
travel through Kanpur, Lucknow, Allahabad, Varanasi, Agra, Meerut,
Dehradun, Hisar, Ludhiana, Patna, Ranchi, Jamshedpur, Gorakhpur,
Raipur, Indore, and Bhopal, across the 18 cities and finally culminate
on 29th September in Mumbai.
Several awards would be presented to the winners in several sections
including Icon of Indian Cinema, Special Contribution to Cinematic
Art, Rajnigandha Achievers Award, Best Foreign Feature Film, Best
Feature Film, Best Director Winner, Best Debut Director Winner, Best
Male Actor, Best Female Actor, Best Short Film, Best Screenplay, Best
Background Score,  Best Cinematography, Best Editing, Cinema of the
Seller (Gold), Cinema of the Seller(Silver), Cinema of the
Seller(Bronze) , Best Music Director, Best Student Film as well as
Best Documentary.

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The event is organized jointly by the Federation of Freight Forwarders of India and the sports club ‘Kalinga Motor’, said Iran’s Ministry of Roads and Urban Development, reported Trend News Agency.

Iranian entities organizing the race are the Ministries of Foreign Affairs and Road Facilities, the Federation of Motorcycles and Vehicles and the Customs Board of the Islamic Republic of Iran.

The 30-day rally will cover the route from extending from Shiraz, Isfahan, Tehran, Qazvin, Rasht to Astara port on Iranian territory and onward to Moscow and St. Petersburg and back again to finish in Chabahar.

Twenty trucks are participating in the competitions, one from Russia, Iran and Azerbaijan, while the rest will belong to the Indian teams. Around 39 participants are taking part in the competition.

The North-South transport corridor is designed to connect Northern Europe with India and Southeast Asia. The route will also link the railways of Iran, Azerbaijan and Russia.

In the initial stage, six million tons of cargo are planned to be transported through the corridor per year and the figure will eventually rise to 15-20 million tons.

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For April-November, the first eight months of this fiscal year, India shipped in about 427,200 bpd, according to the data reported by Reuters.

But India’s oil imports from Iran will likely rise in December, as vessels holding about 4 million barrels of oil sailed from the Iranian ports in end-November and discharged cargoes in early December, the data showed.

Iran has cut oil prices in efforts to retain Asian customers and boost the appeal of its crude compared with other Middle Eastern supply.

Overall India imported 4.7 million bpd oil in November, meaning growth of about 12 percent from a year ago as the country raised its refining capacity.

First deputy oil minister in November announced that Iran has turned to customers in Europe to shore up its crude oil exports.

Iran is in negotiations to secure new buyers in Europe, Marzieh Shahdaei said.

Shahdaei said some of our customers in Asia have reduced imports, but that does not undermine Iran’s crude exports.

Refiners in Italy, France, the Netherlands, Greece and Turkey are the biggest customers of Iranian crude in Europe.

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Saudi Arabia and Iraq continue to be ahead of Iran, which was sixth biggest supplier of crude oil to India in 2015-16, PTI reported on Wednesday.

It has overtaken Venezuela, Nigeria and UAE to become India’s third largest supplier in April-December period of 2016-17.

Iran sold 19.8 million tons of crude oil to India in the nine-month period, officials said. This behind Saudi Arabia’s 30.3 million tons and 29.1 million tons sourced from Iraq.

In full 2015-16 fiscal, Iran had supplied 12.7 million tons of crude oil to India. That year Saudi Arabia had sold 40.4 million tons of oil to India with Iraq chipping in 26.8 million tons. Venezuela supplied 23.6 million tons, Nigeria 23.4 million tons and the UAE 15.7 million tons.

Iran was India’s second biggest supplier of crude oil after Saudi Arabia till 2010-11 but western sanctions over its nuclear program relegated it to the 7th spot in subsequent years.

In 2013-14 and 2014-15, India bought 11 million tons and 10.95 million tons respectively from Iran, officials said.

Easing of western sanctions a year ago has led to Indian refiners raising their purchase from Iran.

During April-December 2016-17, Venezuela supplied 17.5 million tons of oil, the UAE 13 million tons and Nigeria 12.8 million tons.

Kuwait, which was third largest supplier in 2013-14 has steadily slipped, supplying just 7.6 million tons in first nine months of 2016-17 fiscal.

Iran in 2008-09 sold 21.81 million tons oil to India, which came down marginally to 21.19 million tons in the following year. It fell to 18.49 million tons in 2010-11 and to 17.44 million tons in 2011-12.

After the imposed sanctions, India brought down the purchases to 13.14 million tons in 2012-13 and had limited them in the years thereafter.

Officials said India imported 161.7 million tons of crude oil in the April-December period this fiscal, 64.2 percent of which came from the Middle-East region.

India spent $50.62 billion on crude oil imports during the nine months.

January 2017  imports up

Meanwhile, shipping data showed on Wednesday that India’s Iran oil imports rose marginally in January compared to the previous month.

In January, Iranian oil imports more than trebled compared with the same month last year, rising to 554,600 barrels per day (bpd), according to ship tracking data and a report compiled by Thomson Reuters Oil Research and Forecasts.

Indian refiners including Reliance Industries Ltd, operator of the world’s biggest refinery complex at Jamnagar, that had stopped imports from Iran during the sanctions period, have also returned as buyers of Iranian oil.

During January India’s oil imports from Brazil surged to its highest level since April 2015, while imports from Venezuela plunged, almost matching the supplies received in August 2016.

Nigerian oil supplies, hit by militant attack on the African nation’s major Trans Forcados Pipeline, to India fell by 54 percent last month from a year ago.

That forced key Indian clients of Nigeria, mostly state-run companies, to turn to Angola. Imports from Angola rose nearly 70 percent.

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The sharp increase propelled Iran into fourth place among India’s suppliers in 2016, up from seventh position in 2015. It used to be India’s second-biggest supplier before sanctions.

India import 473,000 barrels per day (bpd) of oil from Iran in 2016

For the year, the world’s third biggest oil consumer bought about 473,000 barrels per day (bpd) of oil from Iran to feed expanding refining capacity, up from 208,300 bpd in 2015, the data showed.

In December, imports from Iran trebled from a year earlier to about 546,600 bpd.

In 2015 refiners slowed purchases due to sanctions which choked payment routes, insurance and halved Iran’s exports.

Indian refiners Reliance Industries, Hindustan Petroleum, Bharat Petroleum and HPCL-Mittal Energy Ltd (HMEL) last year resumed imports from Tehran, attracted by the discount offered by Iran.

“In most of 2016 there was a fight among Gulf producers to increase their market share and lifting of sanctions against Iran has intensified that fight,” said Ehsan ul Haq, senior analyst at London-based consultancy KBC Energy Economics.

In April-December, the first nine months of this fiscal year, Iranian supplies to India averaged a record 530,300 bpd, up from about 400,000 bpd before sanctions tightened against Tehran.

India’s 2016 Iranian oil imports were the highest in at least six years, according to the Reuters data.

Government data going back over a longer period shows the average was the highest since the 2001-02 fiscal year.

Overall, India imported 4.3 million bpd oil in 2016, up 7.4 percent from the previous year.

Rising imports from Iran and Iraq lifted the Middle Eastern share in India’s crude diet to 64 percent in 2016, reversing a declines in recent years, partly due to rising prices for Atlantic Basin oil tied to Brent.

The average premium for Brent jumped against Dubai crude to more than $3 a barrel in 2016 from around $1.80 in 2015.

“In 2016 Iran ramped up its output to regain market share while Iraq segregated its production into Basra Light and Heavy to attract customers. Basra Heavy was sold at a discount, making it more attractive than rival grades,” said Haq.

Iran’s share of Indian oil imports surged to 11 percent in 2016 from 5 percent in 2015.

Saudi Arabia remained the top supplier to India last year followed by Iraq and Venezuela.

Imports from Latin America declined for a second year, with its share of imports shrinking to about 16 percent from 18 percent, while Africa’s share fell to about 15 percent from a fifth.

“Low oil prices brought down production in Latin America while Nigerian barrels were impacted by violence in the Niger Delta. Also falling US oil output impacted trade flows, with some Latin American and African oil finding a place in the US,” Haq said.

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Narges Kalbasi Ashtari story

By Marjan Golpira/ She is called the Mother Teresa of India and all for good reason. At 29, Narges is a mother to many orphans, abandoned and visually impaired children in India.

However, today, she has become the victim of a very complex and unjust system in India and is being punished by the very same people she once left her life behind for.

As she puts it for change.org website, “I am going through the most horrific forms of abuse by a group of people with immense power, influence, and protection in Odisha.”

Born in Isfahan, central Iran, Narges’s parents moved to the UK when she was four years old.

Though, early on Narges was exposed to the ugly side of life. Losing both parents to incurable diseases, Narges decided to dedicate her life to serving orphans, who had suffered the very same fate as hers.

At mere 21, Narges took a year off to do some volunteer work for orphanages in Sri Lanka and India.

It was during the eye opening journey that an idea flashed into her mind: opening a children’s home herself in India through foreign funds.

According to a report on charge.org, with much difficulty, Narges was granted an employment visa through a local NGO called ASSIST (Asia Society for Social Improvement and Sustainable Transformation).

In 2011, Narges established the Prishan Foundation in Rayagada, an orphanage home for girls in the Rayagada district in Odisha, which then led to the launch of another home for blind children in Mukundapur, all through the generosity of foreign donors.

Based on her personal account on Telegram, a messaging app, Narges named her organization in the honor of an orphaned blind girl she met in Sri Lanka.

A couple of years after the establishment of her schools, in 2013, ASSIST took away Narges’s first children’s home, the orphanage, through “forged document” and “false promises.”

The founder and secretary of ASSIST registered the Narges Foundation in his own name, manipulating Narges into believing she could not register a foundation as a foreigner.

The NGO then tried to take Narges’s second home for visually impaired children, but this time she fought back.

“I filed a complaint at the police station in Rayagada and the husband and wife behind ASSIST were sent to jail.”

But soon, the court granted the couple bail, and from then on Narges’s life became a “living hell” as she receives life threats constantly.

“They have tried to ruin my reputation, take away my second children’s home, threaten to send me to jail and have my Indian visa revoked.”

But there’s more to the story than meets the eye.

Narges’s life took a turn for the worst when she found herself charged with involuntary manslaughter.

In 2014, Narges arranged a one-day field trip for her children in which a couple, who both worked for the school, decided to bring along their healthy 5-year-old son for the excursion as well.

Their son was not part of the school children.

In an unfortunate accident that Narges and no one else but the parents witnessed, the couple’s boy fell into the river and was swept away.

Surprisingly, to this day the body of the boy has not been recovered from the water, adding more to the mysterious incident.

Greed and pressure by ASSIST made the couple lodge a complaint against Narges, accusing her of throwing their child in the river and murdering him.

“They made up the story in the hope that they would receive a hefty compensation from me.”

Since two years, Narges’s life has turned into a nightmare. She has been in and out of court rooms for a crime she never committed.

However, social media played a pivotal role in disseminating the news of the Iranian-British girl, particularly in Iran, causing a huge public outcry.

As Narges’s story went viral, the Iranian Consul General in Heydarabad, Hassan Nourian, was among the first Iranian authorities to reach out to her.

Nourian paid Narges a visit in Rayagada and joined her in one of her court hearings.

Iranian Ambassador to New Delhi Gholamareza Ansari also reached out to her by meeting Indian officials in ministry of external affairs and requesting protection for Narges from threats and harassment she had to put up with in Odisha.

Although through her help hundreds of thousands of children and families now have a better life in that country today Narges is faced with an uncertain future in India as she waits for her next round of court hearing.

Iran awaits the day that justice is observed in the Narges case, and when she is free from all the troubles and charges, gaining lawful possession of what belongs to her and her many unprivileged children.

In the end, we leave you with a powerful statement of an Indian spiritual master whom Narges reminds us all very much of.

“The good you do today, people will forget tomorrow. Do good any way.” Mother Teresa of Calcutta

Narges Kalbasi Ashtari (L) and Iranian Consul General in Heydarabad Hassan Nourian (C) in front of the court in Rayagada

In the story of Narges Kalbasi Ashtari, it was noted originally that the boy swept away in the river was blind and from Prishan children’s home. However, we found out that the boy was not blind and was not among Narges children’s home.

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The Nagapattinam plant operated by IOC’s subsidiary Chennai Petroleum Corp requires a complete overhaul to produce the cleaner, higher grade fuels needed to meet rising demand in southern India, said B. Ashok, chairman of the two firms.

India, seen as the most important driver of world energy demand growth in the years to come, is building new refineries and expanding a number of existing plants to meet demand.

According to a 2015 report by the International Energy Agency (IEA), India will require up to 329 million tons of oil products annually by 2030. As of last year India consumed 183 million tons of refined products, government data showed.

The government is also planning a countrywide switch to the use of cleaner transport fuels compliant with Euro IV emission standards from April and with the Euro VI standards from April 2020.

CPCL’s two plants, in which Iran’s Naftiran Intertrade Co Ltd has a 15.4 percent stake, are located in the southern state of Tamil Nadu.

Initially the oil processing capacity of the Nagapattinam plant will be raised to between 120,000 bpd and 180,000 bpd and in the next phase to 300,000 bpd, Ashok said.

Nagapattinam site has extra land available that makes expansion easier to accommodate than at CPCL’s bigger 210,000 bpd Manali refinery, Ashok said.

IOC, the country’s biggest refiner, has already announced separate plans to spend 500 billion rupees ($7.3 billion) by 2022 to raise its refining capacity by about 30 percent to 2.08 bpd.

Expansion of the Nagapattinam plant is not a part of that plan and IOC is also now considering raising the capacity of its Panipat refinery in northern India to 500,000 bpd from the initially planned 400,000 bpd.

Ashok said a proposal for the Nagapattinam project is likely to be considered by the board in three to four months after the preliminary studies are completed.

Asked about the cost of the plant he said, “The thumb rule is that setting up a million tons of capacity costs 25 billion rupees”./ Reuters

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A consortium headed by ONGC Videsh Ltd (OVL), the overseas investment arm of Indian explorer Oil and Natural Gas Corp, discovered the Farzad B gas field in the Farsi offshore block in 2008, Reuters reported.

The consortium, which also includes Oil India and Indian Oil Corp, could not obtain permission to develop the field due to Western sanctions against Iran’s nuclear energy program, but those sanctions were removed earlier this year.

OVL is preparing a master plan for development of the gas field, while also working on a pricing formula, the statement said.

India is the second largest buyer of Iranian oil after China, and New Delhi is seeking ways to deepen trade ties with Tehran now that sanctions have been lifted.

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Seyyed Mohsen Ghamsari, Executive Director for International Affairs at National Iranian Oil Company (NIOC), made the remarks adding “presently, the average volume of oil exports to Asian countries stands at more than 600 thousand barrels per day.”

He further touched upon recent crude sails to small Chinese refineries noting “these figures are excluded from overall statistics since small firms purchase products through spot contracts.”

The official also said the volume of the country’s crude exports will rise by 150 to 300 thousand barrels by the end of the current Iranian calendar year (began March 20); “nearly 62 per cent of Iranian crude is being deployed to Asian markets while the rest ends up in Europe and the proportion will remain constant in case of any upsurge in export figures.”

China remained largest buyer of Iranian crude during sanction years enjoying 40 per cent of the share (equal to 400 thousand barrels per day) in Iran’s crude exports.

Iran is presently exporting 2.2 million barrels of crude oil per day but the figure could be well increased to 2.35 million barrels.

Ghamsari had previously said Iran is presently exporting 2.2 million barrels of crude oil per day but the figure could be well increased to 2.35 million barrels.

On the crude oil exports to Europe, he said that 600 to 650 barrels of crude oil is exported to Europe per day.

Iran has announced the plan to increase its oil output to four million barrels per day by the end of the present year while the current figure stands at about 3.85 million barrels.

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India’s oil imports from Tehran in January-September grew 90.5 percent to an average 411,900 bpd, ship tracking data and a report compiled by Thomson Reuters Oil Research and Forecasts showed.

Iran has been boosting oil shipments to recoup market share.

The OPEC producer’s total crude oil and condensate sales likely reached around 2.8 million barrels per day in September, two sources said, nearly matching a 2011 peak in shipments before sanctions were imposed.

Iran, along with Libya and Nigeria, is allowed to produce “at maximum levels that make sense” as part of any output limits in a surprise deal reached recently by the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC).

Under pressure from sanctions, New Delhi had curbed Iranian oil shipments, reducing Tehran’s overall share of India’s oil imports to 5.8 percent in the two fiscal years from April 2013, compared with about 11.3 percent before sanctions were imposed.

India’s average Iranian oil imports in April-September — the first six months of India’s financial year — rose nearly four-fifths to about 468,000 bpd, the data showed, with Tehran’s share in overall purchases jumping to 11 percent — just below pre-sanction levels.

Average imports over the period were at their highest in at least 15 years, the data showed.

India, the world’s third-biggest oil importer, shipped in a record about 4.47 mbd oil in total in September, about 4.4 percent more than the previous month.

State-run Mangalore Refinery and Petrochemicals Ltd. was the biggest importer of Iranian oil in September buying about 150,200 barrels per day, the data showed.

Essar Oil imported about 134,000 bpd followed by 131,000 bpd by Indian Oil Corp. and 69,000 bpd by Reliance Industries, Hindustan Petroleum imported about 68,000 bpd oil.

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