Even though the Delhi High Court had given a carte blanche to the Government to go ahead and take whatever executive action it considered necessary even during the pendency of a PIL before it, one of the inhibiting factors before the Government was the presence of a former President (Venkatraman) and a former Prime Minister (P V Narasimha Rao) on the Board of the Centre.

Venkatraman's resignation will make the task of the government easier.The Comptroller and Auditor General's (CAG) report last week on serious financial irregularities in the award of contracts for building the IGNCA complex is believed to have been the last straw as far as Venkatraman was concerned, sources said.

It is now learnt that Venkatraman had protested in May 1995, when the amendment was made in the trust deed of the Centre,making founder members of IGNCA life members and Sonia Gandhi its life president. A PIL, pending before the Delhi High Court, has challenged that the members had converted by fraud a government trustsituated on 23 acres of prime land in New Delhi, and to which the government had given Rs 134 croresinto a private trust.At the IGNCA's last meeting in October, Venkatraman had suggested that one way out of the impasse would be to rescind the 1995 resolution. The meeting was called to consider this suggestion which he had made to Sonia Gandhi.

But reflecting Sonia Gandhi's views, Ram Nivas Mirdha strongly opposed this. He argued that there was no guarantee that the Government would not go ahead and take action even if status quo ante was restored.

At one stage, Sonia urged Rao, who is the chairman of the executive committee of the IGNCA and in whose time the trust rules were changed, to talk to the Government to find a way out. But Rao reportedly remarked that it would be more appropriate for Sonia Gandhi, asthe Centre's president, to do this herself. Most of the other members had remained silent on the matter.

Murli Manohar Joshi, after he took over as HRD Minister in 1998, had turned his attention to the affairs of the IGNCA. He had also sought the opinion of the A-G. Soli Sorabjee had said that what had been done in 1995 had taken away the powers of the President of India.

Ananth Kumar, who has now been given charge of Culture, said recently that the Government would soon initiate moves to reclaim the assets of the IGNCA. Following the Delhi HC's observations on September 23, Joshi asked officials to prepare the grounds for ``deprivatising'' the IGNCA.

The Government has been thinking of making the President the head of the Institution. The possibility of shifting the IGNCA from the present site near India Gate has also been under consideration. In an affidavit, the Government stated it had decided to take requisite steps, including the ``resumption of land'' from the IGNCA, as it had contributed tothe Trust's corpus of Rs 50 crore and given another Rs 84 crore for the building.