Arnab Goswami among four new appointees to Nehru Memorial Museum and Library society; Pratap Bhanu Mehta resigns

As per a notification released by the Ministry of Culture on 29 October, Republic TV founder Arnab Goswami has been appointed as one of the four new members of the Nehru Memorial Museum and Library (NMML) in New Delhi. The other new appointments are: BJP MP and president of the Indian Council for Cultural Relations Vinay Sahasrabuddhe, former foreign secretary S Jaishankar, and journalist Ram Bahadur Rai. The term of the new members will be until April 26, 2020, or till further orders. The notification said the NMML had accepted Pratap Bhanu Mehta’s resignation. and that economist Nitin Desai, professor Udayan Mishra and former bureaucrat BP Singh will no longer continue as society members. Goswami will be replacing Mehta, who resigned from his position to protest “the manner in which the institution’s reputation and integrity were being compromised by attempts to foist a politically-connected bureaucrat Shakti Sinha"as director, The Wire reported. Sinha is an Indian Administrative Service officer who worked as private secretary to Atal Bihari Vajpayee when he was prime minister of the first BJP-led National Democratic Alliance government at the Centre.

The Economic Times quoted Congress leader Jairam Ramesh, who is also a member of the society nominated by the Jawaharlal Nehru Memorial Fund, as saying: “The people who have been replaced were men of integrity and scholarship.” Sahasrabuddhe and Jaishankar will be replacing professor Udayon Misra and Dr BP Singh respectively, who have been critical of its decision to set up a museum for all prime ministers in the Teen Murti complex in Delhi . Singh and Misra openly spoke against the decision to set up the museum at the complex, as per The Economic Times report. Singh questioned the need for a single prime minister’s museum. “If there is a PMs museum, there may be a demand in every state to have CMs museums as they are the leaders of the states,” the report quoted him as saying. Desai reportedly questioned the choice of location for the museum. Previously, former prime minister Manmohan Singh wrote a letter to Prime Minister Narendra Modi, saying that the memory of Jawaharlal Nehru should be left undisturbed.