Eminent scientist worried by PMO’s rejection of heads appointed to lead India’s top research institutions.Distressed by the manner in which the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO) has rejected the appointment of the heads of several preeminent scientific institutes in the country, including, most recently, Tata Institute of Fundamental Research (TIFR), Bharat Ratna recipient and renowned scientist Dr C N R Rao has sought PM Narendra Modi’s intervention.“For several months, there has been no head of the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CISR). The appointment of heads of my own institution, Jawaharlal Nehru Centre for Advanced Scientific Research (JNCASR), as well as of TIFR, is held up. I don’t know who it is in the PMO or the Cabinet who is insisting on a new procedure that is holding up appointments on technical grounds,” he told Mumbai Mirror. Dr Rao is Linus Pauling Research Professor and Honorary President at JNCASR.On Wednesday, he publicly expressed his disappointment with the PMO rejecting the appointment of theoretical physicist Sandip Trivedi as the director of TIFR – no reason was furnished for the decision, other than “technical grounds”.“I hope to talk to PM Modi and convince him to intervene. The government is saying we did not follow procedure by not releasing advertisements [inviting candidates to apply for the position] in the papers,” he said. “Should the heads of the country’s premier scientific institutes be selected by the same procedures that are used to recruit policemen or school teachers?”TIFR authorities confirmed that the PMO had rejected the appointment of Trivedi, a distinguished physicist and the winner of several awards including Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Award in The Physical Sciences, 2005, and the Infosys Prize in Physical Sciences, 2010. “As of now, Prof Trivedi will continue to serve as officiating director. The selection process is being reinstated and the outcome of that process will decide if the next director will be Prof Trivedi or someone else,” said Antony George, registrar at the institute.Dr Rao, who serves on the selection committee appointed by the Ratan Tatachaired TIFR council of management, emphatically defended the selection of Trivedi to the post, calling him a “very brilliant man” and “the best theoretical physicist in the country”. Besides Rao, the committee included senior scientists such as Dr K Kasturirangan and Dr Srikumar Banerjee.At TIFR, students backed the choice of Trivedi, who has been a professor at the institute for over a decade. “He is proactive and student friendly. He started a new practice of holding a Director’s Lunch every Thursday to help resolve students’ issues and also took the initiative of holding a general body meeting to address grievances regarding the delay in hike of fellowships,” said research scholar Anand Kant Das. Prof Trivedi was not available for comment.