An Archaeological Survey of India (ASI) officer, suspended last year for not carrying out changes in a counter reply to the Supreme Court on the Ram Sethu project, has filed a case against Culture Minister Ambika Soni and her senior officials for making him a “convenient scapegoat” to save herself from the public furore that ensued.Seeking to quash the chargesheet against him, Chander Shekhar, Director (Administration) in the ASI, has told the Central Administrative Tribunal that the “purpose and motive of issuance of chargesheet is oblique and aimed solely at providing cover to the respondents in respect to the situation, which are their own creation, resulting in political fallout causing serious consequential repercussion to them”.Shekhar, along with Assistant Director (Monuments) V Bakshi, was suspended in September 2007 for not incorporating corrections in the counter affidavit that set off a political storm, with the BJP accusing the UPA Government of hurting religious sentiments of Hindus in stating that there was no historical or scientific proof about the existence of Lord Ram.Soni had then said her officers had made corrections, including deleting paragraph 20, which argued that mythological texts Ramayana and Ramcharitmanas could not be called historical records that “incontrovertibly prove(d) the existence of the characters or the occurrence of the events, depicted therein”. According to Shekhar, the ministry’s Chief Public Information Officer Roopa Srinivasan, while replying to an RTI appeal for information on who carried out the changes, wrote: “No such information is available”.“Thus, after one year of carrying out the claimed corrections in paragraph 20 of the draft affidavit, the ministry has now accepted that there is nothing on record to establish as to who carried out these claimed corrections in paragraph 20,” says Shekhar’s petition, which also names former culture secretary Badal K Das and ASI Director General Anshu Vaish as respondents.Five days after the political outburst, the ministry had informed the Prime Minister’s Office saying that Joint Secretary RC Mishra, Das and Vaish, discussed and approved the changes in paragraphs 20 and 29 on September 6. Shekhar has said that only Mishra critically examined the draft affidavit, noting that “Paras 19 and 20 of the CA categorically state the stand of the ASI. This may please be seen. Source for the phrase ‘army of monkeys’ used in para 29 may also be ascertained”.“It may not be out of place to mention that in the counter reply filed before the Supreme Court the words ‘army of monkeys’ pointed out by Joint Secretary stood deleted,” Shekhar says. But, claims Shekhar in his petition, Mishra made no mention of the September 6 meeting on the file while he did so in an identical situation on the same issue less than two months before the controversial event. There was also no mention of the alleged changes by the Additional Solicitor General to the Court while seeking withdrawal of the affidavit, says his petition.
