Government-owned museums located at 44 excavation sites across the country are struggling for survival for want of staff. Caretakers of many of these museums have sent an SOS to the Centre to urgently fill vacant posts and ensure adequate security to protect the artefacts. If not, they will be left with no option but to close down these institutions housing priceless antiquities.
These museums, supervised by the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI) under the Union Culture Ministry, are set up at various excavation sites, showcasing a wide range of antiquities like sculptures, documents, rare photographs and materials recovered from the excavation venues.
Some of them, like the Swatantrata Senani Museum in Red Fort in Delhi, give a glimpse of major phases of India’s struggle for freedom.
However, acute shortage of staff is plaguing almost all site museums. At least 45 per cent of the posts have been lying vacant for years, sources said. In some, lower division officials are holding senior posts as well.
For example, a museum opened in Piparwaha in Uttar Pradesh in 2015 is functioning without any sanctioned staff. The situation of five museums in Delhi, one in Old Fort and other four in Red Fort, is not very different.
This is in contravention of the ASI’s guidelines, according to which the minimum required staff for each museum is an Assistant Superintendent Archeologist, financial and administrative head, two Assistant Archeologists, an education officer of the museum, two lower division clerks, one assistant storekeeper, permanent museum attendants and security personnel as per requirement and a computer operator.
Unable to fill the posts because of ban on regular recruitment as well as apathy, the ASI has now asked the museum heads to outsource the services to meet the needs to ensure accountability in case of theft or other untoward incidents.
However, unhappy with the state of affairs, many of the officers in-charge of museums around the country have raised a red flag about the security of the antiquities and other historical items.
Sources conceded that the Ministry is regularly getting letters from the heads of museums from across the country seeking security and permanent staff.
“They have expressed fear that absence of adequate staff might lead to some untoward incident and in case that happens they should not be held accountable,” the sources said.
The latest is a SOS from the in-charge of the Archaeological Museum in Fatehpur Sikri in Agra which has a precious Jain Saraswati statue.
The ASI has been forwarding the letters to the Culture Ministry for its consideration. “To cope with the situation, we have advised them to outsource the security personnel for taking care of the museums instead of deploying casual labourers on muster rolls.”
This is not the first time that questions have been raised about the security of the artifacts kept in the site museums. In 2013, the CAG had noted that during its inspection, it found that 131 antiquities were stolen from various monuments/sites and 37 antiquities from site museums.
The CAG had also asked the Ministry to take an initiative in development of a comprehensive security policy for museums with uniform standards for all museums under its control.
Sites museums are located at Agra, Amaravati, Badami, Bijapur, Bodhgaya, Chandragiri, Chanderi, Chennai, Rajasthan, Delhi, Gwalior Halebid, Hampi, Jageshwar, Kalibangan, Kangra, Khajuraho, West Bengal, Bihar, Kochi, Konark, Kondapur, lucknow, lothal, Murshidabad, Nagarjunakonda, Nalanda, Old Goa, Ratnagiri, Ropar, Sarnath, Sanchi, Sri Surya Pahar, Srirangapatna, Tamluk, Thanesar, Piparwaha, Vaishali and Vikramshila.