IGNCA Board Dissolved and Replaced, "I Was Not Told" Says Founder Kapila Vatsyayan

NEW DELHI: Founder Director and Trustee of the Indira Gandhi National Centre for the Arts Kapila Vatsyayan did not even get the phone call informing her that the Board of Trustees had been dissolved, and replaced by a new set of members by the government.

She was surprised when contacted by The Citizen shortly after the sudden change, for her comments. “I have no idea, when did this happen,” she asked. Did you expect it at some point? “Well these days we can expect anything to happen but we had been told about a year ago that perhaps there would not be any change and Chinmaya Gharekhan (Chairman of the Board) had managed to get some sort of assurance from the government,” she said. The term of the present Board was till 2018.

The Board of Trustees was dissolved Thursday morning by the government without notice, and a new board set up almost immediately. Former president of the Board, retired Ambassador and later Special Envoy for West Asia to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh Chinmaya R.Gharekhan has been replaced by Hindi journalist and former editor of Jansatta Ram Bahadur Rai.

Some of the earlier members were informed of the change almost minutes before it was effect. Former foreign secretary Salman Haider admitted to getting a phone call minutes before he was contacted today. Other members include danseuse Shovana Narayan, author Namita Gokhale, and former Home Secretary G.K.Pillai who is now employed with the Adani business group from Gujarat.

The new board of 20 members now includes former Governor Jagmohan, danseuse Sonal Mansingh, lyricist, ad-guru currently CEO of McCann World group Prasoon Joshi who has been a recipient of the Padma Shri under the UPA government, film producer Nitin Desai, D.P.Sinha and others.

Vatsyayan says she was “the culprit” for setting up INGCA in the first place. It came into existence with an initial corpus of Rs 50 crores as she did not want it to be under government control. “I ran it for 14 years and left with a secondary corpus of Rs 90 crores,” she said. The 86 year old cultural icon has been with the Nehru-Gandhi family since the first Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru. The Centre was started on November 19, 1985 when Rajiv Gandhi was Prime Minister. The Rajiv Gandhi, R. Venkataraman, P.V. Narasimha Rao, Pupul Jayakar, the Finance Minister of 1987, H. Y. Sharada Prasad and Dr. Kapila Vatsyayan.

“I did not want any governmental interference,” she said admitting that she was not successful in this. The Centre came into existence as an autonomous institution under the Ministry of Culture with independent funds through the created corpus. However, under different governments the Ministry started playing a more proactive role with the current revamp perhaps being the most drastic. is in charge, it makes the appointments, and constitutes the Board now.

The new chairperson Ram Bahadur Rai is well known in journalistic circles. He received the Padma Shri last year in 2015. He has authored Rahvari ke Sawal (on former PM Chandrashekhar) and Manjil se Jyada Safar (on V P Singh). He is also the Patron for the Integrated Talent Development Mission (ITDM)