IIAS embroiled in another row

SHIMLA, Dec 3: As controversy over Indian Institute of Advance Studies (IIAS) invitation to Murli Manohar Joshi, Union Minister for Human Resource Development, refuses to die, the institute has come out with a fresh clarification to deny scrapping of the lecture of Nobel prize winner Amartya Sen.

The IIAS, in a statement here today reacted sharply to the reports that Joshi had been invited for Radhakrishnan memorial lecture in place of Sen. An institute release said here that Sen was invited by the institute through an invitation dated January 28, 1997, to deliver Radhakrishnan memorial lecture in September, 1997. However, Sen had declined the invitation. In his letter of February 3, Sen had expressed his inability to deliver the lecture and informed the institute that "given the state of my overcommitment, I am not really in a good position to write something suitable in the coming year or so. I am also completely tied up and must decline your invitation."

However, on October 16, 1997, Sen was invited again to deliver the Radhakrishnan memorial lecture in September 1998. Again Sen expressed his inability and declined the invitation. Responding to this invitation Sen wrote to the institute on October 28, 1997: "Unfortunately, it is not going to be easy for me to do this lecture in 1998 because of my transition to Trinity College and that for the substantial part of the year I shall have to continue doing my duties at Harvard as well as at Trinity."

The release said while it was a fact that governing body of the institute at its meeting held on October 15 last had taken a decision to invite Murli Manohar Joshi to deliver the lecture in 1999, it was completely false that this decision was taken superseding that to invite Amartya Sen. During the deliberations of the governing body the name of Amartya Sen did not figure at all, it said.