ICHR gets new chief

By Our Special Correspondent

NEW DELHI, JULY 2. The eminent ancient Indian historian, Prof. M.G.S. Narayanan, has been appointed full-time Chairman of the Indian Council of Historical Research (ICHR). A notification to this effect was issued by the Ministry of Human Resource Development (MHRD) today in the wake of a controversy over the appointment of a Member- Secretary for the Council.

Prof. Narayanan, who was the Member-Secretary of the ICHR, during the chairmanship of Prof. Irfan Habib, has been appointed for three years; beginning the day he takes charge. A former head of the Department of History at Calicut University, Prof. Narayanan - billed by some historians as sympathetic to the saffron ideology - succeeds Prof. B.R. Grover who died on May 10 this year.

As a temporary arrangement, the Government had appointed the senior-most member of the Council, Prof. K.S. Lal, as ICHR Chairman on May 19. Although an early appointment of a full-time Chairman was not anticipated, the controversy over the office of Member-Secretary created a situation wherein the Government was forced to step in to ensure that the Memorandum of Association and Service Rules were adhered to.

On the day he took charge as Chairman, Prof. Lal issued an order diluting the powers of the then Member-Secretary, Ms. Madhu Arora - a Deputy Secretary with MHRD who had been given additional charge of ICHR. Later, he asked her to return to her parent department; resulting in the Government appointing Dr. R. C. Aggarwal of the Archaeological Survey of India as full- time Member-Secretary a week later.

But Prof. Lal - who as member of the Council had approved the nomination of Dr. Aggarwal for the office of Member- Secretary last year - objected to the appointment on the premise that there was a lot of overlapping between the duties of the Member- Secretary and the Director (Research & Administration).

In fact, Prof. Lal even refused to issue the appointment letter to Dr. Aggarwal - as is the procedure - for a week after which the Ministry issued a directive asking him to do so. Though Prof. Lal did fall in line and issued the appointment letter, he sought to dilute the powers of the Member- Secretary by stripping his office of all the administrative powers and assigning him only academic duties.

The Government's late afternoon decision to appoint a full-time Chairman, therefore, comes as a welcome move and historians in the Council - normally wary of Sangh sympathisers - are for now glad that the adhocism of the past few weeks is over. For, the ICHR has been functioning without a full-time Chairman, Member- Secretary, Deputy Director (Administration) and Deputy Director (Accounts) for some time now.

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