Editor,
The recent order from the State DGP with regard to banning tinted glasses in all vehicles in Shillong is misleading and unfortunate. The Central Motor Vehicle Act 1988 and rules 1989 and subsequent ruling by judicial courts in India has given direction that vehicles are free to put tinted glasses as long as they adhere to the norms i.e., minimum 70% transparency in front and rear glasses and minimum 50% in case of side glasses. Many vehicles in Meghalaya follow this requirement although majority of them do not. Hence, the DGP’s order can only apply to those not adhering to the stipulated norm. Those who do follow must not be victimized. In fact most public figures including the CM, his ministers, MLAs, DCs, SPs etc. and the police officials themselves do not adhere to the requirement and are seen to have fixed almost 0% transparency (total dark) tinted glasses in their vehicles (both public and private).The police are supposed to enforce only some rules of the roads and in this case they can only penalize those who do not obey the dark glasses rule. I hope that better sense prevails on the DGP and he takes back his order to ban all forms of tinted glasses. Moreover, I dare the DGP to stop and penalize the vehicles of the above public figures who are blatantly disobeying the MV Act. These people including the police should know the rules and then expect the common man to obey them. Lastly, if the police does not re-examine the banning order and put a fresh order in couple of days, I urge upon the public, NGOs of Meghalaya etc. to immediately file a PIL/stay order in the court to stop this indiscriminate ban on dark glasses by the DGP. People’s rights is above the police order.
Yours etc.,
John Syiem
Shillong 3
Malicious letter
Editor,
Kindly refer to letter captioned, “Fall from grace”, (ST Oct 27, 2011) written by George Kharlyngdoh of Shillong – 8. I had sent a letter to “Mr. George Kharlyngdoh”, Shillong – 793008, under Registered A.D. No. B RE 416591187 IW on 3-Nov-2011. The letter was returned to me, undelivered, proving that the writer of the letter had given a fictitious name, and an incomplete address. The letter is one, which casts aspersions on my character.
This letter may therefore kindly be published at least to partially rectify the damage done to my name.
Yours etc.,
HP Oflyn Dohling
Shillong -1
Communities as project stakeholders
Editor,
In Patricia Mukhim’s article “Political instability equals tentative governance” (ST October 21, 2011), she rightly stated that those for whom the schemes are engineered should not merely be passive recipients of doles. An RTI application recently exposed the lack of focused attention on the need of mentoring of communities by the Soil and Water Conservation Department in Ri Bhoi District in its developmental programmes. As a follow up to this, we confirmed that the Department is implementing hundreds of projects worth crores of rupees in other Districts as well and astonishingly the officers of the Department who prepared the plan and estimates, themselves execute the construction works. As the officers act like contractors they could not devote time to constitute the Project Committee members con-scious of the significance of the projects . The illiterate members of these Committee parti-cipates only as labourers while the few literate ones work as sub contractors to these officers or as supervisors. This is a dangerous trend as the simple psyche of the village folks is adulterated with the lure of money only thereby defeating the fundamental objectives of the rural development programmes which aims for a progressive and sustainable growth . There is lack of proper supervision by the officials since the number of projects are too many and widely spread. As all these will have adverse effects in the long run , we feel that the Department should change its strategy by involving the officers in supervisory roles only and in capacity building of the village community and leave the construction part to others. This will not only help in proper implementation and effective implementation of the programmes but also give employment opportunities for others through such construction works. We hope the Government seriously looks into this matter in the best interests of all.
Yours etc.,
P Marbaniang,
Via email