Knives out in MP BJP over museum director

Knives out in MP BJP over museum director
YOGESH VAJPEYI

BHOPAL, SEPT 23: A campaign against the director of Indira Gandhi Rashtriya Manav Sangrahalaya (IGRMS) in Bhopal launched by some state BJP members has suffered a major setback with a number of senior leaders claiming that their names were used without their approval of verification of facts.

These leaders have lodged their protest against ``misuse of the party's forum'' with Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee, Home Minister L.K. Advani and HRD Minister Murli Manohar Joshi, saying they did not seek the ouster of the present director, Dr Kalyan Kumar Chakravarty.

BJP MP Laxmi Narain Pandey has gone on the record to deny his involvement. He claims he had never written any letter demanding an inquiry against the IGRMS director -- as attributed to him in a statement issued on his behalf by the BJP media centre on December 10, last year. The release, authenticated by a state BJP media in charge Prabhat Jha, had claimed that Pandey had written to the Union HRD Minister demanding an inquiry against the director and opposed the extension of his term.

Pandey says he has written no letter on the subject ``either to the HRD Ministry or any other ministry''.

``The contents of the statement were neither correct nor, probably verified,'' Pandey wrote to Chakravarty.

IGRMS is an autonomous institute funded entirely by the Central Government. The funds, which earlier came from the HRD Ministry, are now granted by the Department of Culture. The annual IGRMS budget is between Rs five and six crore.

Asked to comment on Pandey's letter denying that he had written to the HRD minister on the subject, Jha was taciturn. ``No such letter or denial has been brought to the party's notice,'' he said.

``This has happened a number of times in the past also,'' says Laxmi Narain Sharma, a senior BJP leader. In 1996 when Chakravarty's first term was over, similar fake complaints allegedly written by Sharma and five other MLAS were sent to then HRD Minister H.R. Bommai, Sharma recalls. ``When we came to know of it, all of us exposed it as a lie,'' he adds.

However, the catch is that the anti-director lobby has succeeded in getting a preliminary inquiry by the CBI instituted on the basis of these fake complaints and is pressing for his removal on this ground.

That it was a well-planned move is evident from the timing of the latest campaign. Dr Pandey's statement was released at a time when the file concerning the IGRMS director had reached the office of the Union Minister for Culture, Dr Anant Kumar, for the decision. The newpaper clippings were faxd to Delhi to support the charges.

Dr Chakravarty, a 1970 batch IAS officer of MP cadre, is of the rank of the state principal secretary, equivalent to an additional secretary in the Government of India. A Ph.D. in Arts History from Harvard University, he has won international acclaim for his efforts to make the museum accessible even to people from remote tribal areas.

Referring to the charge against him that some specimens had been ``misplaced'' as ``an attempt to cover up past bungling'', Dr Chakravarty says, in fact, it was he who took the lead in preserving these specimens. ``Between 1990 and 1994, the curator in charge had kept all the specimens outside the museum, and was paying a hefty sum as the rent. I brought them into the museum under strict security and introduced a system of gate pass, and started keeping a record,'' he says.

He adds that this move of his met with stiff opposition from a section of the museum staff and they reportedly began a campaign against him with the help of their political mentors.

A recent inquiry has shown that one of the officers, suspended later, had not deposited some valuable foreign specimens -- received during 1990-94 -- in the store for seven years. He is said to have told the authorities that he was waiting for the present director's ouster so that these could be spirited away.

Dr Chakravarty also gets a clean chit in the much-publicised soil purchase scandal in the IGRMS. The soil was obtained from MP Government's Bhoj Wetland Project free of cost and the state government was only paid transportation charges through cheques. ``It's ridiculous to suggest that there can be an underhand dealing between a government to government transaction,'' says a senior MP official.

However, the `remove-Chakravarty' lobby was undaunted. It intensified its campaign as his term ended on March 6 this year. A public interest litigation was filed against him in the Jabalpur High Court, demanding a CBI probe. When the PIL was dismissed as ``motivated by personnel vendetta'', the newest offensive allegedly misusing the names of senior BJP leaders was launched.