Skewed spending

This refers to 8216;Laloo8217;s package for Rabri: 32 Rly bridges8217; IE, August 10. Already, train travel on the Bihar ...

This refers to 8216;Laloo8217;s package for Rabri: 32 Rly bridges8217; IE, August 10. Already, train travel on the Bihar section is a nightmare. Our experience of a journey between Gaya and Varanasi in 2002 witnessed the daylight snatching of a necklace in a second class reserved compartment where unauthorised passengers numbered more than the reserved passengers. At night a dozen tea vendors were patrolling the compartments with kerosene stoves, a fire hazard in trains, and the patrolling railway police enjoyed free tea from them. Smoke emanating from the stoves was suffocating and we were unable to sleep due to the movement, smoke and overcrowding. Bridges at the cost of railway safety?

8212; V. Andanallur Pune

Good work

8226; Apropos of 8216;Welcome Home8217; IE, August 10 and your campaign 8216;Return their Home 038; Honour8217;, great job, Indian Express. You deserve our gratitude for bringing our sons home. If it had not been for you they would be rotting in Pakistani jails. Keep up your good work.

8212; Surinder Puri On e-mail

Amnesty8217;s silence

8226; This refers to the letter by Bikram Jeet Batra, legal officer, Amnesty International India, New Delhi IE, August 9. Amnesty is 8216;8216;disappointed8217;8217; at India for being on the wrong side of the justice divide. However, it is intriguing that when Dara Singh was sentenced to death for the gruesome murder of Graham Staines in Orissa, Amnesty did not make any noise. Why now? Is the rape and murder of an innocent teenage girl less gruesome than the Staines murder? Amnesty will get a lot more credibility in India if it starts talking also about the killing of railway engineers in Kashmir or of innocent Muslims in Bihar by the Yadavs. Amnesty8217;s silence in these instances erodes its credibility. It is also unfortunate for the cause of human rights.

8212; Munir Parikh Ahmedabad

Two standards

8226; Apropos of the passing of the law terminating all agreements related to sharing of river waters by the Amarinder Singh government in Punjab, the fact is that even UN guidelines on water management and usage state that all water treaties be reviewed every 25 years. An agreement is always signed in a particular situation and context. When the situation changes, its terms can always be altered. In the Narmada tribunal, when Gujarat and Madhya Pradesh were in dispute and Rajasthan made a plea that it be given a share of the water, the claim was put down on the ground that it was neither a riparian nor a basin state. But Punjab did not get any water from rivers in the Yamuna basin even though parts of Punjab fall within it. If not being a riparian or a basin state was a consideration in one case why should the same consideration lose significance in others?

8212; Nitin Anand Delhi

Rethink on talaq

8226; Akhtar Sultan Begum indeed has a fascinating story to tell in 8216;68 years ago, she gave herself divorce rights8217; IE, July 28. The All India Muslim Personal Law Board AIMPLB chairman is taking a very flimsy plea in not considering again the issue of the talaq clause in the nikahnama. A nikahnama has to have a mention of mehr which is the compensation promised to the woman in the event of talaq. Thus the issue of talaq is covered in the mention of the mehr itself.

8212; L.S. Narain New Delhi