Readers' Forum

Traffic mess: nightmare for commoners

Dear Editor,
Gone are the days when the mode of transport for reaching different places was the tonga, the cycle and a few odd buses. With the introduction of modern technology, the life style has completely changed, as a result of which we see that same city has now round about 1.25 lakh commercial vehicles plying on its different roads.
But what we find is that the roads are the same as some 20-25 years back. There has been also a senseless restriction of buses on many routes particularly in the Civil-Lines area, which has invited much public anger against the authorities. Another thing is that the rate of accidents too has increased during the past few years. With the tremendous increase in the population, the number of vehicular traffic has increased in both urban as well as rural areas but unfortunately the government has not done anything to streamline this traffic in a proper way.
The students and the working class people suffer the most in the wake of this traffic mess on the roads. Unreasonable restrictions have compounded their problems. For instance, it takes one hour to reach S.P College from Qamarwari nowadays because of messy traffic scenario, otherwise the same distance would have been covered in just 15-20 minutes.
Apart from the traffic jams, the people have to move on foot from Central Telegraph Office, where the buses are not allowed to ply and diverted to other side. Particularly the students and office-goers face great inconvenience on this account.
At times in case of diversion of traffic from the main roads, the link roads are used for plying of vehicles, this again causes inconvenience to the people of those areas. The buses are diverted from Batmaloo from inner route to reach Rambagh. It seems as if the authorities at the helm of affairs of Traffic department simply don’t have any planning, rational approach to streamline the messy traffic scenario.
Given the scenario, one realizes the need of implementation of the Master plan, which recommends building of Flyovers, widening of roads by removing bottleneck at various places and much more, without further delay. But then, the government plans move at snail’s pace.
—Moazum Mohammad Bhat,
B A Part-II,
Amar Singh College,
Srinagar.

HC on security of politicians

Dear Editor,
Harsh strictures of Justice Tirathsingh Thakur and Justice Veena Birbal of Delhi High Court on security-cover to politicians (mainly for a show of status-symbol) causing inconvenience to general public and unnecessary burden on exchequers, echo voice of commoners. The court-comments in this regard should make union and state governments to act without waiting for courts to pass necessary orders in this regard.
—Subhash C. Agrawal,
1775, Kucha Lattushah,
Dariba, Delhi 110006.

Welcome SC order on marriage registration

Dear Editor,
It refers to welcome-order from the Apex Court for making marriage-registration compulsory. Even though the Apex Court’s decision is well-aimed, yet practical difficulties are expected in implementation of the order especially in rural areas which are not conveniently accessible to courts where such registration may have to be made.
To practically implement compulsory marriage-registration, a mechanism can be developed by giving registration-powers to postmasters who may forward data to district courts for collecting and distributing registration-certificates in a time-bound period.
To make the scheme popular, these certificates should be attractively designed and packed in a plastic cover.
—Madhu Agrawal,
1775, Kucha Lattushah,
Dariba, Delhi 110006.

VVIPs’ movement at Margi

Dear Editor,
This refers to the news report, which appeared in your esteemed daily (KT: Oct 25, 2007) captioned “Supplies offloaded to accommodate VVIPs.” This is indeed paradoxical that in the democratic set up, the people’s representatives themselves leave no stone unturned to exploit the tragedies for their political interests.
For them, it’s not the people, who matter the most, certainly not even their (people’s) sufferings, which bother them anyway. Their only concern is their vote bank and their political interests for which they can sacrifice not just the interests of the people but the citizens as well. So to be precise, there was nothing unusual in this incident.
—Bashu Khajuria,
Jammu