Parliamentary panel pulls up culture ministry on vacant posts

A parliamentary standing committee has pulled up the ministry of culture for not appointing heads of institutes and said it showed that the government was not serious about the smooth running of its cultural bodies.
In a report tabled in the two Houses of Parliament yesterday, the committee said not having a chief would adversely effect the functioning of the institutes and urged the ministry to fill up the posts at the earliest.
The parliamentary standing committee on transport, tourism and culture noted that many cultural bodies such as the Salar Jung Museum, five zonal cultural centres, the Kalakshetra foundation, Nava Nalanda Mahavihara, the Delhi Public Library and the National Gallery of Modern Art were functioning without heads.

"This shows that the government is not serious about the proper functioning of the cultural institutions," the panel, headed by Trinamool Congress MP Derek O'Brien, said.
The committee said it was disappointed by the lack of commitment in filling up the vacancies existing at various levels and recommended that the ministry pursue the matter and fill up the vacancies as soon as possible.
In its reply to the committee, which is a part of the report, the ministry said that as of February 2017, the Archaeological Survey of India had vacancies in 2,914 posts, including 316 posts in the Group A and Group B categories.

The ministry said all its organisations were pursuing the matter in a bid to fill up the vacancies, and in many cases, the process was underway.
The 31-member committee includes Congress's Rajeev Shukla and Kumari Selja and Shatrughan Sinha of the BJP.