Have you ever heard of any government spending almost 40 lakh on a book? Or a book project going on for 43 years, and counting, with crores of rupees spent on it?

All this and more has been happening at the Indian Council of Historical Research (ICHR), an autonomous academic body funded by the Government of India. It spends liberally to produce books in the name of 'Special Research Projects'.

And these special research projects, which should be wrapped up within a few years for only a few lakhs of rupees, drag on for decades and bleed taxpayers of crores. Among the defaulting historians are the late Bipan Chandra, Irfan Habib and KM Shrimali. Prof Chandra, a formidable scholar of modern Indian history, is the sole reason why the 'Towards Freedom' project, which started in 1972, is still continuing.

The ICHR's oldest, costliest and the most controversial project continues to bleed the public exchequer. It provoked Arun Shourie to write Eminent Historians in 1998, and he accused ICHR of spending 1.70 crore on the project.

This project, which is as old as ICHR itself, is yet to be completed, though its apologists often cite AB Vajpayee's six-year reign - when the project was suspended - to justify the delay. If a top HRD ministry official is to be believed, over 2.45 crore have been spent on the nine-volume project. But ICHR has still not got its hands on the last volume.

But people privy to ICHR's functioning said that the actual spend on the project is much more than 2.45 crore. A former ICHR member, requesting anonymity, told MAIL TODAY: "It's a conservative amount. The total cost would easily be above 3 crore." Actually a lot more, if one factors in 43 years of inflation.

As for Habib and Shrimali, they have not submitted a single manuscript for the 'Dictionary of Social, Economic and Administrative Terms in Indian/South Asian Inscriptions' project, which was started in 1989 with the mandate to bring out nine volumes in 15 years. This project has so far soaked up more than 42 lakh.

The ICHR's feeble defence about the expenditure: it has no record of the money spent on the special projects. "It's difficult to give you a definite figure because we don't have any such record," conceded ICHR chairperson Y Sudershan Rao. He explained that if a seminar were held for the 'Towards Freedom' project, the spend would be clubbed to ICHR's overall seminar expenditure rather than to the project's account.

"Similarly, when we provide managerial or editorial assistance to these historians, the salary of the support staff isn't marked with the respective project, which should be the case," he added. The awaited volume of 'Towards Freedom' project covers the year 1942. "We are yet to get this volume, originally assigned to Bipan Chandra," Gopinath Ravindran told MAIL TODAY just before resigning as ICHR's member-secretary last month due to "irreconcilable differences" with the BJP appointed ICHR chairperson.

"The death of Prof Chandra, followed by Prof Visalakshi Menon's, who took up the project after the former's demise, has caused the delay," he added.

The ICHR's annual report of 2006-07, however, punctures Prof Ravindran's claim. It informs how ICHR "has decided to provide secretarial assistance and made special provision for editorial assistance to Prof Bipan Chandra". It also stated that Dr Visalakshi Menon of Delhi University and Prof Salil Mishra of IGNOU had been assigned to assist Prof Chandra in finalising the volume, "which is expected to be ready by early 2008". So what happened from 2008 to date? How can Prof Chandra's death on August 30, 2014, be the reason for the project's delay?

"Look, we don't have any provision to force these historians for submitting their volumes in a definite time frame. We can only request," Prof Rao said. But shouldn't there be a time frame, especially when the taxpayers' money is involved? "Yes, I agree, and we are looking into it, " the ICHR chairperson added.

However, the 'Dictionary' project is slowly turning out to be the ICHR's Achilles' heel. "I don't know how it's shaping up. There's just no update," Prof Rao said. A top HRD official regards this as the "new Towards Freedom project". He said: "It stands where it was in the early 1990s, except for a few thousand cards being computerised and a volume pertaining to south Indian inscriptions getting published. Nothing else has moved, apart from the expenditure of 42 lakh."

Prof Ravindran admitted: "We have published Volume-I from A-D of the dictionary pertaining to south Indian inscriptions. It was submitted by KV Ramesh and released in December 2011."

Prof Rao was clueless about other volumes of the dictionary project, going to the extent of saying he didn't see much coming out of it, at least not in the near future. The ICHR's annual reports since 2004 reveal the mess. In 2005-06, for instance, the ICHR provided software facilities to Prof Shrimali, who along with Ramesh (now replaced by Prof Y Subbarayalu) and Irfan Habib, spearheaded the project. Shrimali looked after north Indian inscriptions, Ramesh exploring south Indian inscriptions, and Habib dealing with Arabic, Persian and Urdu inscriptions.

Shrimali has not produced a single volume to date. All he has to show for all these years is a few thousand computerised cards compiled by hired assistants who get paid by ICHR. "All these cards remain in Prof Shrimali's custody. I don't know what will happen if something occurred to him," says a former ICHR member who practices law in a Delhi court.

Habib's record is worse. If the annual reports are to be believed, he has been promising to submit his manuscript since 2006-07. It went on until, interestingly, the 2011-12 and 2012-13 annual reports certified he was making "satisfactory progress"! The AMU professor is yet to submit a single volume.

When MAIL TODAY enquired about the stage of Prof Habib's work, ICHR informed that "Habib saab has excused himself from this project". Rao said: "Now Prof Shireen Moosvi is looking after it."

An HRD ministry official, who insists he isn't close to the current BJP government, believes the problem is more fundamental in nature. "There was no need to have ICHR when we already had Indian Council of Social Science Research. But more pressing question is: do we really need such bodies, which will only be misused for political reasons."