A special audit to go into the expenditure over the last six months as well as constitution of a two-member committee to find out what went wrong in that period and to fix responsibility were the other two important decisions taken.

Not surprisingly, the next day, the other camp declared the Sunday meeting invalid, saying there was no quorum and the remaining members had not been informed. Rules can be changed only when three-fourth of the members are present at a meeting specially called for the purpose.

Official sources indicated that the Government will soon restructure the trust keeping Sinha out. Sinha, however, maintained that the Government had no such powers because he was duly elected by trustees.

Sinha, who is based in Delhi, had a long-running battle with previous trust secretary Rameshwar Mishra ‘Pankaj’, who resigned recently. While the Government had asked both Sinha and Mishra to resign following their public sparring — both called each other names and washed their dirty linen in public — the Chairman has made it clear that he would like to go out on his own terms.

While Mishra flaunted his proximity to Culture Minister Sharma, Sinha is believed to have knocked on the doors of senior Sangh Parivar leaders like L K Advani and RSS chief K Sudershan. Since Mishra’s resignation, Culture Secretary Manoj Srivastava, an IAS officer, has been appointed secretary of the trust.

Sunday’s meeting was therefore surprising in more ways than one. With Mishra gone, nobody expected Sinha to up the ante by calling a meeting of his supporters.