Delhi HC notice to Centre on plea seeking selection of Chairman of Lalit Kala Akademi

The Delhi High Court on Wednesday issued a notice to the Centre on a petition challenging selection of Chairman of Lalit Kala Akademi.

A Division Bench of Chief Justice DN Patel and Justice Jyoti Singh asked Centre and Lalit Kala Akademi's Chairman to file a reply to the petition and listed the matter for further hearing on March 19.

The petition was filed by Satya Prakash through advocate Mehmood Pracha.

In the petition, the petitioner urged the court to issue a direction to Centre to quash the entire selection process conducted by the Ministry of Culture for the post of Chairman, Lalit Kala Akademi.

"The selection of Chairman of Lalit Kala Akademi by a so-called committee was done without holding any meeting and a fake resolution was prepared to overreach the rules. The committee was notified on March 20, 2018by Ministry of Culture and sent to Lalit Kala Akademi in the evening of March 21, 2018, with three members located at Delhi, Gulbarga and Thane," the plea reads.

The plea added that 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 March 23, 2018.

"It is humanly not possible as two of the committee members are more than 90 years of age and cannot rush to Delhi from Thane and Gulbarga by any means and hold the meeting in such a manner," the petition added.

The plea said that the constitution of the search committee itself is in violation of the rules as no previous Chairman was included despite there being four of them available.

The plea further added that no female member was included which is in gross violation of the rules.

( With inputs from ANI )