MoD,PMO say no to 2nd phase of N-E Trilogy

The government has turned down a proposal pushed by former Army Chief Gen V K Singh to publish the second part of a three-volume work on the Northeast that would have cost the exchequer over Rs 30 crore

THE government has turned down a proposal pushed by former Army Chief Gen V K Singh to publish the second part of a three-volume work on the Northeast that would have cost the exchequer over Rs 30 crore.

The three-part series penned by author Kunal Verma on the Northeastern states had been approved by Gen Singh while he was in power in 2010 and the Army spent Rs 93.15 lakh on pictorial volumes possibly the highest ever amount spent on a publication project by it.

Verma,whose father Maj Gen (retd) A K Verma,was among those who filed a PIL in the Supreme Court against current Army Chief Bikram Singhs appointment along with retired Navy Chief L Ramdas,former IAS officer M G Devasahayam and four others,had claimed that under phase two of the plan,the trilogy would have been translated into major vernacular languages and distributed in schools throughout the country.

Verma had pegged the estimated cost of publishing 10,000 sets for each state at Rs 30 crore. Officials in the Defence Ministry said while the proposal was mooted by Gen V K Singh through a DO (Demi Official) note,it was turned down because no budgetary provision were available for any such project. A similar appeal to the Prime Ministers Office by Gen V K Singh was also turned down on the same grounds,officials said.

While confirming that the proposal to publish the three-volume work was approved by Gen V K Singh,Army HQ has said that no plans were approved for any subsequent part. Subsequent phases of the North East Trilogy were not part of the contract, a senior officer told The Indian Express.

Author Kunal Verma,however,in a letter to The Indian Express,has said as far as I know,the project was backed to its hilt by the President,the Prime Minister and the Defence Ministry who had all been brought into the loop by the former Chief of Army Staff General V K Singh.

While Verma has said that the present Chief of Army Staff General Bikram Singh was extremely supportive of the project as the then Eastern Army Commander,the Army has made it clear that at no stage were permissions or grants taken from him.

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Verma has also claimed that The Indian Express in its first report on the matter erroneously claimed that he was paid Rs 25,000 each time to attend functions organised to release the book. However,the reply to a Right to Information (RTI) application filed by the newspaper clearly states this case of payments made to Verma on six occasions.