NEW DELHI: The HRD ministry is all set to remove noted political scientist Yogendra Yadav as a member of the University Grants Commission (UGC). This is for the first time in the Commission's 57-year history that a member of the UGC is being removed.

On Wednesday, the ministry sent a show-cause notice to Yadav asking him to explain within a week as to why he should not be removed. The reason cited by the ministry is that Yadav's status has undergone a change since he was made a member of the UGC during Kapil Sibal's tenure. He is now a senior leader of the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP). The ministry has also said Yadav's continuance in the UGC is a conflict of interest since as an AAP member he is guided by his party's ideology, agenda and manifesto. Sources said if Yadav does not reply within a week, the ministry would remove him on the basis of available records.

Yadav says he had offered to resign when he joined the AAP, but was told by the ministry he can continue. Yadav says he had even met HRD minister M M Pallam Raju in UGC office where his political association was discussed. Yadav said, "I am surprised government has discovered it now, 10 months after I gave them in writing. It may have something to do with autonomous functioning of UGC. I sincerely hope government does not meddle with the functioning of autonomous institutions out of vindictiveness." He says, the UGC Act does not bar members from being a member of any political party nor does Commission's code on conflict of interest mentions it.

Yadav says the subtext of his removal has a lot to do with uncomfortable questions he had been raising about "shady decisions of the UGC". For instance, Yadav says, the academic performance index was redrafted at the behest of the ministry that he had opposed. He was also opposed to UGC's committee on Delhi University's four-year undergraduate programme (FYUP). Yadav had also objected to the manner in which decision of letting foreign institutions was changed by removing the condition of them being in the top 500. But the decision, which, he says, has irked the ministry relates to opening of the Inter-University Centre (IUC) on teacher training at Kakinada, Raju's constituency. Yadav had threatened to give a note of dissent in the last UGC meeting, but was told the matter is being dropped from the agenda. He says UGC later decided to set up the IUC there. Yadav and three other UGC members had also been protesting against the manner in which minutes of the meeting are finalized without incorporating dissenting views, and are even changed.