Carry on, Dravid

• The ouster of Sourav Ganguly is a welcome step as he was not fit. Rahul Dravid’s performance as captain so far has not been great. He should learn to be more positive in his approach to the game. Certainly, India needs a permanent captain till the 2007 World Cup, and Dravid must shape up to play this role. We wish him all the best.

— Ahmad Rais Siddiqi New Delhi

Strategy for BJP

• Apropos your editorial,‘Second rung ringtones’(IE, Oct 14), Pramod Mahajan’s appeal for “collective leadership” and “team spirit” in the BJP revolves around personalities instead of ideology and strategy. What is expedient for BJP is to identify issues (in addition to Ramjanambhoomi, Article 370, and the common civil code) which will mobilise substantial majority public opinion in its favour. It will not be sufficient for BJP to focus on UPA’s failures; rather the BJP and RSS should jointly chart out strategies to win over marginal and disgruntled elements in the Congress and form a wider NDA base and then emerge as a serious contender for power at Centre.

— S. N. Phadnis Mumbai

What about ads?

• With reference to Sonia Gandhi’s directive to party colleagues to stick to her austerity code (IE, October 15), it’s a good move but has the Congress culture ever permitted such directives to be obeyed in the past? And what about the full page advertisements with coloured photographs of Sonia Gandhi herself appearing almost every day in all the national and regional dailies?

— Inder Nath On e-mail

Harsh on students

• The recent judgment of the Allahabad High Court questioning the minority character of AMU has been extremely harsh on the students (who had got admitted through AMU’s 2005 admission policy) by calling for the cancellation of their admissions.

— Huma Hasan Aligarh

The website way

• The Right to Information Act is a step in the right direction for the common person. The most simple solution is to make such information public in a pro-active way on a website exclusively developed for this purpose. All government departments should be linked to the site. Since this information is for public, everyone should have an access to any file through this website. Those who have no computers can access such information through cyber cafes.

— Mahesh Kapasi New Delhi