The Delhi high court has anulled the appointment of widely-known historian and DU professor Mahesh Rangarajan as the director of the Nehru Memorial Museum and Library (NMML) ruling that it violates the prescribed procedure.

The appointment had been opposed in court by Shri Kishan, a senior NMML fellow and a professor of history at a Rohtak University, on the grounds that it had been made in an opaque manner and other eligibles had been excluded by it. Kishan held that the appointment should have been made after publishing a notification of the vacancy and inviting applications which would have then been screened based on their merit. However, NMML had instead invited applications on the basis of personal contacts, he claimed.

The court ruled in agreement noting, "The procedure adopted by the Society in the matter of appointment of Mr. Rangarajan is held to be in violation of the prescribed procedure and the law. Consequently the appointment of Mr. Rangarajan to the post of Director of the Society is set aside and quashed and the Society is directed to — as expeditiously as possible and at the latest within a period of three months from today — make a fresh appointment."

The court, however, has allowed the library to retain Rangarajan as the director for the interim as his suitability and qualification for the post has not been questioned. It said that he may be reappointed if the NNML chooses, but the selection has to adhere to the due procedure.

In a separate petition on the NMML appointment norms, other eminent historians - Bipan Chandra, Irfan Habib, Shireen Mousvi, Arjun Dev and D N Gupta - have challenged the decision to open the director's post to non-historians.