New acting chairperson of ICHR invites historian's ire

Historians like Irfan Habib, Arjun Dev, DN Jha, RC Thakran and Amar Farooqui are among the signatories, reports Chetan Chauhan.

Published on: Feb 10, 2007, 24:15:00 IST

None | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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Eminent historians are up in arms over the HRD ministry's appointment of additional secretary KM Acharya as acting chairperson of the Indian Council of Historical Research (ICHR) after the retirement of Professor DN Tripathi.

"The government has apparently deliberately withheld the appointment of his (Tripathy's) successor so that a bureaucrat may take over the organisation during the interregnum," said a joint statement by 20 historians on Friday.

Historians like Irfan Habib, Arjun Dev, DN Jha, RC Thakran and Amar Farooqui are among the signatories.

Urging the government to immediately appoint a historian of stature as chairperson of ICHR, the historians said no action should be taken by the acting chairperson to disturb either the present administrative arrangements at the ICHR or the programmes undertaken by the council.

ICHR is coordinating celebrations of the 150 years of India's first war of Independence against British rule. Some historians feel that the celebrations may be jeopardised because of the appointment of a bureaucrat. "He may not understand history like an expert and may act more on the directions of the government," said a former member of ICHR.

They also claim that the HRD ministry's move is against the basic principles of the Common Minimum Programme (CMP) which clearly mentions that there can be no compromise on the autonomy of institutions like ICHR, Indian Institute of Advanced Studies and Indian Council of Social Sciences Research.

This clause in the CMP was due to widespread allegations that the NDA government had violated the autonomy of ICHR. HRD minister Arjun Singh had appointed an inquiry committee headed by Professor Bandopadayay to look into the complaints. The committee, which found the allegations to be true, recommended that ICHR's autonomy be not compromised at any cost. Its recommendations were accepted by Singh and forwarded to ICHR for further action.

HRD ministry officials said Acharya's appointment is a temporary one till a new chairperson is selected.

Email Chetan Chauhan: chetan @hindustantimes.com

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Chetan Chauhan
Chetan Chauhan is the National Affairs Editor looking into all aspects of news and features from across India. A Chevening scholar with over three decades of experience in reporting and news management, Chetan has extensively covered all important aspects of the social sector, political economy, environment and climate change nationally and internationally. He did a journalism course at the Reuters Institute of Journalism in Oxford and Digital Media training at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. He started as a reporter with The Statesman in 1996 and joined the Hindustan Times in 2000 in the metro bureau covering environment, crime and Delhi politics. He covered hot local news, from the Jessica Lal murder case to the rebellion of Delhi Congress MLAs against then Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit, to the replacement of toxic vehicle fuel with cleaner compressed natural gas (CNG) in the national capital. Some of his stories on air pollution became part of the Supreme Court’s landmark MC Mehta versus Government of India case in the National Capital Region (NCR), forcing the government to take corrective measures. As part of the national political bureau since 2004, he covered important central sectors such as environment, education, social justice, labour, rural development, water resources, renewable energy, agriculture, broadcasting and the Planning Commission for more than a decade producing several exclusive and investigative breaking stories. His specialisation is the environment, having covered at least a dozen United Nations global conferences on climate change, biodiversity and wildlife including climate summits in Paris, Copenhagen and Bali. He also covered India’s two five-year plans ---11th and 12th and reported on drafting and execution of right based laws such as Right to Education, Right to Information and rural job guarantee law, MG-NREGA, now being introduced in new format as VG-RAM-G Act. He has in-depth knowledge of social sector issues. He was one of the first to report on tigers vanishing from Sariska and Panna wildlife reserves in 2004 and 2008, respectively, leading to the setting up of the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) and the introduction of stringent penal provisions for poaching. He has written extensively on the rising human-animal conflict in India and the degradation of India’s biodiversity hotspots because of mining and other activities. Since 2004, Chetan has covered Parliament comprehensively and participated in training on the nuanced coverage of Parliament proceedings. He has travelled extensively across India to cover national and provincial elections since 1998, especially in the Hindi heartland states, considered India’s road to power. He writes a regular column for Hindustan Times, Ecostani, on important national politics, economy, Himalayan ecology and environmental issues. His other responsibilities include providing inputs for edits and edit page articles for the publication, apart from managing news flow from across India.Read More

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