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KAVEREE BAMZAI
NEW DELHI, JUNE 8: The Government has sought a go-ahead from the Delhi High Court to take over Congress President Sonia Gandhi's fiefdom, the Indira Gandhi National Centre for the Arts (IGNCA). In a carefully-worded affidavit to the High Court last week, the Ministry for Human Resource Development (HRD) has requested that the ``moveable and immoveable properties made available by the Government to IGNCA'' be attached.
The HRD Ministry has done this after getting a favourable opinion from Attorney General Soli Sorabjee that the amendments which made Sonia Gandhi, R Venkataraman, P V Narasimha Rao, H Y Sharada Prasad and Kapila Vatsayan life trustees were not valid. Though the BJP-led Government had been debating this move for some time now, it says it was constrained to move decisively when its letters on November 3 and January 27 to the IGNCA were not answered.
The IGNCA was set up in 1987 as an autonomous trust under the HRD Ministry and originally had seven trustees -- with the late Rajiv Gandhi beingpresident and Kapila Vatsayan (now a life trustee) being member-secretary. The Government had provided a fund of Rs 50 crore and an additional Rs 84 crore for a new building.
According to the HRD affidavit, the amendments to the original trust deed are invalid on three grounds: because no ``prior written approval'' was sought from the Government; because no clearance was asked for from the Finance and HRD ministries; and the move wasn't brought before the Cabinet for reconsideration.
In the affidavit, the Government has said: ``The checks and balances built into the system'' were removed by the 1995 amendment. It has added: ``Such a fundamental alteration is against the conception of the trust by its makers. No power of amendment provided in the trust deed can be used to alter its basic structure.''
Copyright © 1999 Indian Express Newspapers (Bombay) Ltd.
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