After the Directors of IIT Delhi and NCERT besides several others institutional heads, it’s now the National Bal Bhawan (NBB) Director who has sought the HRD Ministry’s ‘permission’ to be relieved so that she could go back to her parent cadre Navodaya Vidyalaya.
Sources in the HRD Ministry said the NBB Director Usha Kumari MC, whose appointment itself is embroiled in a controversy, has forwarded a Navodaya Vidyalaya letter to the ministry which asks her to return from her deputation.
NBB is an autonomous organisation under the HRD Ministry and the appointment of Usha Kumari is under litigation in the Delhi High Court. She has, however, not cited any reasons for being relieved from the NBB. Kumari’s tenure ends in January 2016.
The issue of her “biased” appointment was raised in the Parliament in the Budget Session this year. An HRD Ministry official said that the decision whether she would continue or not has to be taken by the NBB Chairman Shalu Jindal, wife of senior Congress leader Navin Jindal.
Former HRD Minister MM Pallam Raju had ignored his Ministry’s selection committee’s recommendation for Rishi Kumar Vashisht for the NBB Director’s post. Vashisht is at present Deputy Director at Centre for Cultural Resource and Training (CCRT).
Kumari was apparently favoured as she is wife of former Private Secretary to former HRD Minister late Arjun Singh.
In the panel of names recommended by the selection committee list in December 2012, Vashisht was followed by Usha Kumari. The panel, headed by the then HRD Ministry’s Additional Secretary Amarjit Singh, had indicated that if Vashisht was not preferred, then Usha was to be appointed. Having been ignored Vashisht took legal course.
Usha Kumari earlier courted controversy when she gave a complete miss to last year’s Teacher’s Day event organized at the institution and proceeded for a vacation to Chennai. The HRD Ministry had issued standing instructions to all the schools and educational institutions to be part of the audience of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s address to the nation to mark the Teacher’s Day. It was mandatory for them to be present within the institutions’ premises.
Usha Kumari was also in the thick of controversy when the london-based Nekchand Foundation took umbrage to the disrespect shown to Padamshri Nekchand’s artefacts which were found trashed as garbage in Bal Bhawan. late Nekchand had personally created them within the Bal Bhawan in the 1980s.