Part I of the Explanatory Handbook on Codes for Earthquake Engineering published by Bureau of Indian Standards has been critically revlewed. Suggestions are given for enriching contents of the Handbook in its next edition. Some of the solved examples in the handbook require corrections and these are mentloned. Some examples have debatable assumptions and these have been solved by the finite element method to check validity of such assumptions and auitable modifications are suggested. Finally, typographical errors that have not yet been Included in the errata avallable with the handbook are listed in the appendix.