• The first swine flu fatality means the government can’t be complacent as to the actual number of the infected. It also exposes the laxity of state measures and the inability of clinics to detect the disease in the initial stages. Questions should also be raised on proper checking facilities at airports. But now that the virus is spreading within the country, the possibility of the victim getting the virus at the clinic itself is cause for worry. It means, one can go in with a normal cold, and come out with swine flu!

— Arundhati Sharma

New Delhi

Ecological games

• Ramaswamy Iyer’s article on the Commonwealth Games venue is most pertinent. The writer is justifiably anguished by the fate of the Yamuna plains in Delhi, thanks to the bad decision of locating the Games there. The form of the apex court judgment hasn’t helped either. Inadequate consideration of expert opinion and poor reasoning behind it will certainly have long-term adverse consequences.

— R. Venkatanarayanan

Noida

Judging concerns

• A seasoned Indian litigant might stop at nothing; depending on his case and its financial ramifications, and may even accuse a judge of “shady deals”. There are only two occasions when a judge’s assets need to be known to his boss, the CJI and the president of India: at the time of appointment and, once, annually.

Such declarations should be checked by a competent body consisting of the Union law minister, the attorney general and a nominee of the CJI, and a representative of the opposition in Parliament. But members of the judiciary should be excluded from the purview of the RTI because of the nature of their work and also because they can’t use the media to defend themselves.

... contd.