By IANS,
New Delhi : Leading historian Mridula Mukherjee has got a two-year extension as director of the Nehru Memorial Museum and Library here but she awaits a final nod from Prime Minister Manmohan Singh.
The executive council of the Nehru museum, chaired by Karan Singh, gave the extension July 27, culture ministry sources said Wednesday. All the members who attended the meeting backed Mukherjee, the sources said.
The members of the council include former government official Anil Bordia, journalists Dilip Padgaonkar, Mammen Matthew and Suman Dubey and two representatives from the culture ministry.
The recommendation is now with the prime minister for final approval, they added.
Mukherjee’s three-year deputation ended last week.
Mukherjee’s extension was opposed by 57 scholars and think tanks who petitioned Manmohan Singh to revive the museum so that it again becomes “India’s pre-eminent centre of dispassionate scholarship in humanities and social sciences”.
In a letter, they demanded that “once the present director Mridula Mukherjee’s term ended in August, her successor must be chosen through an open transparent process”.
The signatories to the letter included Rajmohan Gandhi, Sunil Khilnani, Sanjay Subrahmanyam, Ramachandra Guha, Nayanjot Lahiri, Sumit Sarkar, Krishna Kumar, Partha Chatterjee, Sugata Bose and Nivedita Menon.