Shakti Sinha, who was private secretary to Atal Bihari Vajpayee when he was Prime Minister, has been appointed Director of the Nehru Memorial Museum and Library, a source said.
The official announcement will be made soon, the source said.
The director’s post has been lying vacant since last year after Mahesh Rangarajan stepped down as the government described his appointment by the United Progressive Alliance government as “illegal and unethical”.
Mr. Sinha, an IAS officer of the 1979 batch, was considered a highly influential Joint Secretary in Mr. Vajpayee’s Prime Minister’s Office in the late 1990s. He had taken voluntary retirement in 2013 when serving as Finance Secretary in the Delhi government.
The advertisement issued for the director’s post was reportedly modified at the last moment to accommodate Mr. Sinha.
Controversy erupted over the appointment of director after a prominent member of the Executive Council of the institution, Pratap Bhanu Mehta, quit allegedly over shortlisting of Mr. Sinha, who, reportedly until a few days ago, was a director in the India Foundation, a think tank aligned to Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sevak.
Besides Mr. Mehta, a political scientist, the selection committee, headed by Minister of State for External Affairs and vice-chairperson of the Executive Council, M.J. Akbar, who is also on the India Foundation board, had six members.
At a meeting last week, Nitin Desai, economist and former Undersecretary-General of the United Nations, spoke out against the shortlisting of Mr. Sinha and Indira Gandhi National Open University academic Kapil Kumar.
