JAIPUR: With the additional district and sessions court Jaipur striking down the dismissal of Dr. Ashok K, Das from the post of director of the historic City Palace museum here on Wednesday the royal battle for the control of the prestigious museum between the Rajmata Gayatri Devi and her stepson. LtCol Bhawani Singh has entered the next round.
Dr. Das was removed from the post of museum director in April last year by the former ruler of Jaipur Lt Col Singh who is also the chairman of the Maharaja Sawail Man Singh museum trust.
Addressing the museum staff soon after, Lt Col Singh had even stated that Dr. Das was removed because he was the protégé of Rajmata Gayatri Devi with whom the former Maharaja is presently engaged in a property dispute.
The court order has described the dismissal of Dr. Das as “null and void illegal and without any effect.”
The dismissal of Dr. Das was opposed by six of the seven trustees of the Maharaja Sawail Man Singh trust as the director had served the museum for nearly 16 years and was a scholar of high repute. Dr. Das was also a member of the official delegation from the Festival of India in the USSR in 1987. But Lt Col Singh was also not wide off the mark when he described’ Dr. Das as a protégé of the Rajmata since it was she who had brought him to Jaipur in 1972.
Lt Col Singh had even removed the Rajmata from the board of trustees in November 1986, but Mrs. Gayatri Devi had secured a stay order from the Rajasthan High Court in February 1987. The fate of other members of the trust also hangs on fire at the moment since the former ruler had in his capacity as chairman of the trust also removed Mr. Dharmavira ICS (retd) (and former Governor of West Bengal and Karnataka) and Mr, R.C Aggarwal former director of the Department of Archaeology and museums Government of Rajasthan from the trust.
These members were replaced by Mrs. Padmini Devi wife of Lt Col Singh, Mrs. Parmeshwar Godrej of Bombay and the former ruler of Kapurthala. But the trustee removed by Lt. Col Singh moved the Rajasthan High Court where the matter is now pending for more than a year. The next hearing for the case is scheduled on May 4, 1989.
Meanwhile the city palace museum, arguably one of the finest in the country as far as the collection of Mughal period antiques is concerned today presents dismal picture to the heavy influx of tourist traffic in the Pink City. Though open to public the prize collection of antiquities is sealed and the research and publication activities have come to a halt.
The result of the royal feud is that the museum could not eyen organize an exhibition in the memory of Sawai Jai Singh I the astronomer king who was the founder of Jaipur last year.
Article extracted from this publication >> April 28, 1989
