B.S. Sodhi sent me a fax after reading my previous column on Kanwariyas. He is miffed by the fact that Kanwariyas are given priority on Delhi roads. He says, “It is high time that a PIL is filed in Supreme Court for all the inconvenience they (All other such “religious” activities) cause and the hooliganism perpetrated on the public. Imagine Delhi-Hardwar highway being closed for traffic. Highways are the arteries of the nation.”

I agree with you. This time too the Delhi-Hardwar National Highway is closed to vehicular traffic from Monday till August 3 to ensure smooth movement of Kanwariyas. According to a news agency report, Vehicular traffic plying from Delhi to Dehradun, Rishikesh and Hardwar has been diverted to alternative routes from Monday.

I think what best can be done is to make a kind of makeshift parallel route for them. At least keep the national highways open for vehicular traffic. Instead they can use the alternate routes for Kanwariyas. However, this won’t happen, as people want to take political mileage out of it. Moreover, when religious matters come, nobody wants to poke their fingers in it. Only our courts can do such an act of bravery.

Meanwhile, Sodhi also writes that, “Your photographers show only the vehicles violating traffic rules, jumping road dividers but never their number plates. It will make it easy for traffic police to prosecute them. Why can’t the road dividers be made taller, let’s say at least two feet high making them impossible to cross over.”

Actually our photographers try their best to get the number plates also but sometimes action happens so fast that they miss it. The fact that they shoot such pictures is a big thing as these things happen instantaneously.