Plea Challenging The Selection Process Conducted By Lalit Kala Academy: Delhi High Court Issues Notice

A division Bench of Chief Justice DN Patel and Justice Jyoti Singh issued the direction while hearing the plea filed alleging that the selection of Chairman of Lalit Kala Akademi by 'so called committee' was done without holding any meeting and a fake resolution was prepared to overreach the rules.

According to the petitioner, the committee was notified on 20th March 2018 by Ministry of Culture and sent to Lalit Kala Akademi in the evening the next day with three members. The petitioner alleged that while the committee is shown to have met and passed the resolution which is undated without any details of place, time and submitted the same to Ministry of Culture on 23rd March 2018, it could not have been humanly not possible as two of the committee members are more than 90 years of age and could not have rushed to Delhi from Thane and Gulbarga by any means and hold the meeting in such a manner.

Terming the constitution of the search committee itself violative of the rules as no previous Chairman was included, the petitioner further added that no female member was included thereby grossly violating the rules.

The petitioner further alleged that one of the members of the said committee is a political leader of the ruling party, Vice President of BJP and a Rajya Sabha MP. He is not qualified to be a member of the committee as he is not an artist of visual art but was appointed as a member of the committee and had without any authorization signed on all letters while also being involved in forging and fabricating the alleged resolution.

The petitioner stated that a number of representations were made and RTI applications were filed but were of no use. He contended that he has the entire documents which show that the mischief was done, and there was fabrication and fudging of documents, resolutions etc. which is illegal on the face of it and violative of the rules .

The plea was filed by the petitioner Dr. Satyaprakash through Advocate Mehmood Pracha.