Bjp May Allow Sonia To Stay In Ignca

The BJP-led government is expected to soon scrap the controversial amendment to the original trust deed of the Indira Gandhi National Centre for Arts by which Congress president Sonia Gandhi and four other high profile individuals were made life trustees in 1995. However, this would not mean their immediate removal from the cash-rich culture body.

By scrapping the amendment, the effort is to restore the original deed. This means that the term of Gandhi and others would end after they complete 10 years as stipulated in the original deed. While Gandhi is the president of the trust, the four others are R Venkataraman, P V Narasimha Rao, H Y Sharada Prasad and Kapila Vatsyayan.

The law ministry and the attorney general of India have opined that the amendment made to the centre's original 1987 deed, carried out by former Union minister for human resource development Madhavrao Scindia, is bad in law. The present minister Murli Manohar Joshi is likely to notify the nullification of the amendments shortly.

The law ministry has opined that a decision by the minister approving the amendments alone does not have the validity of law. Records indicate that the amendments were not examined in the Department of Culture, nor was the ministries of law and finance consulted. In fact, the amendments came to the notice only when the IGNCA asked the ministry for more funds for its building project.

The amendment to the original deed involved more changes, which allegedly gave extraordinary powers to the life trustees. The changes included: that they could amend the original trust deed without permission of the government.