Lucknow, May 14: Dust storm, hail and lightning have claimed as many as 23 lives in the last 12 hours in Uttar Pradesh, an official said on Monday.

The storm hit Etawah, Banda, Auriyya, Meerut, Kanpur rural, Kannauj, Farrukhabad and Orai districts.

Late on Sunday gusty winds, followed by dust storm had brought life to a standstill in many parts of the state. Many houses were razed to the ground, hoardings and trees uprooted and power outages reported from various cities and towns.

The relief commissioner's office, although, has confirmed only 18 deaths besides two dozen injuries in Sunday's dust storm.

District officials have been asked by Chief Minister Adityanath to ensure prompt relief, a government spokesman said.Due to the uprooting of trees, vehicular traffic on the busy G.T. road near Orai was disrupted for more than four hours.

A woman standing under a tree in Kannauj was killed as it fell on her while two persons have been reported dead from Barabanki.

Three deaths, including a child have been reported from Bulandshahr due to a wall collapse.

Five persons have been reported dead in Kasganj and one in the temple town of Vrindavan. Two persons died in Saharanpur after being struck with lightning.

One person died in Muzaffarnagar as he was hit by a tree branch when he was driving a bike.

One person was killed in Ghaziabad's Lalkuan area after a tree fell on a car and a six-year-old died in Hapur after falling in a tube well tank due to the squall.

A passerby was hit by a hoarding brought down by winds near the Stellar Jeevan Society in Noida and died while one woman was killed in Aligarh.

While one died in Sambhal, two persons were killed in Banjariya village when two minarets of a mosque were ripped off by high velocity winds and they fell on a house. One person was killed in Budaun.

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New Delhi: Rajiv Memani, the chairperson of Ernst and Young India, expressed sadness that no one from the firm attended the employee's funeral, saying it was "alien to our culture" and that the individual had supposedly died from extreme work pressure. Memani, who has been subject to intense criticism on social media for what he perceives to be a hostile work environment, expressed his profound sadness for the untimely death of Anna Sebastian Perayil in a post on LinkedIn.

"Although nothing can completely fill the gap in the family's lives, I have sent them my sincerest sympathies. I sincerely apologize for our absence from Anna's burial. This is not at all representative of our culture. Memani said, "It has never happened before and it won't happen again." He also emphasized that he would not stop until the objective of "nurturing a harmonious workplace" was achieved.

Clarifying further he said, “Creating a healthy work environment has always been very important to us, and we place the utmost value on our employees' well-being."I want to reaffirm that our people's welfare is my first priority, and I will personally fight for this goal.”

On July 20, Anna Sebastian Perayil, an employee of E&Y since March, passed away. This week, the incident came to light due to the widespread distribution of her mother Anita Augustine's open letter to the corporation, in which she claimed that Anna gave in to "work pressure".

Augustine stated that her daughter's funeral was attended by no one from the company in question. "I contacted her managers following her burial, but I didn't hear back. In the letter, she said, "How can a company that claims to uphold human rights and values fail to stand by one of its own in their last moments?"

As a result of his denial that “work pressure" was the cause of the Pune woman's death, Memani came under fire on social media, according to an Indian Express article.

The Center started looking into what happened before Anna passed away as the matter escalated in urgency. Shobha Karandlaje, the minister of state for labor, announced on Thursday that a comprehensive inquiry into the claims of a hazardous and exploitative workplace was under progress.