The government has finally moved to fill the top posts in some of the leading cultural institutions in the country, lying vacant or occupied by part-time appointees for years. The Culture Ministry has initiated the process for recruitment of the Director General of Archeological Survey of India (ASI).

Culture Secretary Jawhar Sircar told The Indian Express that a search-cum-selection committee for recruiting ASI DG had already been instituted and advertisements inviting applications from candidates would be issued this weekend. This would be followed by a similar exercise for National Library and other institutions in the coming weeks.

“In the next four weeks, we hope to initiate the process of recruitment in each of these institutions. Each of these proce-sses would take about a month to find a suitable candidate. In about a maximum of two months, we should have the right people heading these institutions full-time,” Sircar said.

The current ASI DG, K N Srivastava, will soon move to the Ministry of External Affairs as Additional Secretary and Financial Advisor.

As reported by The Indian Express on Monday, five of the eight top cultural institutions in the country have been functioning without a full-time head for years. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh himself had intervened — clearing a proposal in January this year for adopting a search-cum-selection method instead of relying on the usual UPSC route — in order to expedite the process.

The new method also broad-based the criteria of selection, including increase in the age limit for appointment up to 67 years and that of retirement up to 70 years. Some of the provisions in the new method were resisted by officials in the Department of Personnel and Training and the Law Ministry, sources said.

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