From being accused of being anti-Nehruvian to stirring fears in the Congress that Narendra Modi will soon appropriate its national icons, the Prime Minister announced on Saturday that he will head the National Committee to commemorate the 125th birth anniversary of India's first Prime Minister, Jawaharlal Nehru.
A PMO release said Mr. Modi reconstituted the committee and its first meeting will be held “soon after Deepawali.”
No one from the Nehru-Gandhi family is a part of the committee that includes six Cabinet Ministers as ex-officio members including the Home, Finance, External Affairs, HRD, Culture and I&B Ministers. Congress leaders in Parliament Ghulam Nabi Azad, Mallikarjun Kharge, MPs Karan Singh and Maulana Mohammad Madani (MPs) are on the committee.
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B.P. Singh, former Governor, Sikkim, Ram Naresh Yadav, Governor of Madhya Pradesh, former Foreign Secretary M.K. Rasgotra, former Lok Sabha Secretary General Subash Kashyap, Lokesh Chandra, journalist Suman Dubey, former Cabinet Secretary Naresh Chandra, Prof Madhavan Palat, Editor, Selected Works of Jawaharlal Nehru, Jawaharlal Nehru Memorial Trust, New Delhi, Chandrasekhar Dasgupta of The Energy & Resources Institute, New Delhi, Nasir Tyabji, former Fellow of the Jawaharlal Nehru Trust and Senior Fellow, NMML, New Delhi are on the committee.
On October 2, Gandhi Jayanti, Mr. Modi launched the Clean India campaign by invoking Mahatma Gandhi. He has announced another phase of the Clean India campaign from November 14 (Nehru’s birth anniversary) to November 19 (Indira Gandhi’s birth anniversary).
Others on the committee include Vice-Admiral K K Nayyar, former diplomat C R Gharekhan, former Army chief Gen V P Malik, Pratap Bhanu Mehta of the Centre for Policy Research, journalists Rajat Sharma and Swapan Dasgupta, M J Akbar of the BJP, former Uttarakhand Governor Sudarshan Agarwal, the Director General of National Archives of India and Ravindra Singh, Secretary Ministry of Culture, who will be the Member-Secretary.
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