Union Government reconstituted IGNCA Trust; Ram Bahadur Rai appointed President

The Government of India on 14 April 2016 reconstituted the Indira Gandhi National Centre for the Arts (IGNCA) Trust with immediate effect.
Senior Journalist Ram Bahadur Rai was selected as President of IGNCA. Veteran dancer SonalMansingh, film maker ChandraprakashDwivedi and lyricist Prasoon Joshi are included as members of the 20 member reconstituted body.
• Ram Bahadur Rai is a renowned Hindi Journalist and former news editor of Jansatta newspaper.
• He has also authored books on VP Singh named Manjil se Jyada Safar and RahvarikeSawal on Chandrashekhar.
• He was a close associate of Jayaprakash Narayan, and was also part of the 11-member Steering Committee that led the JP Movement.
• He was the organising secretary of AkhilBharatiyaVidyarthiParishad (ABVP) during the 1974 Bihar movement led by JP Narayan against the misrule and corruption in the government of Bihar.
• He was one of the first journalists to report about the 1991 Hawala Bribery scandal while working with Hindi daily Jansatta.
• Indira Gandhi National Centre for the Arts is a premier government-funded arts organization in India.
• It is an autonomous institution under the Union Ministry of Culture.
• It was established in the memory of Indira Gandhi, the late Indian Prime Minister, with KapilaVatsyayan as its Founding Director.
• The IGNCA was launched on 19 November 1985 by former Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi.