The Maharashtra government informed the Bombay High Court on Thursday that it will publish Dr Babasaheb Ambedkar's M. Sc. thesis, titled "Decentralisation of Provincial Imperial Finance in British India".
A division bench of Justices Prasanna Varale and Kishore Sant was also informed that the UK Senate library has granted permission to the state to publish his thesis.
The HC had taken suo moto (on its own) cognisance of a media report highlighting that the government had stalled the project of publishing the literature of Ambedkar with an estimated cost of Rs 5.45 crore.
The government had then formed a committee of expert members to oversee the publishing of volumes of handwritten literature of several social reformers.
Additional government pleader Poornima Kantharia submitted the Minutes of Meeting (MoM) of the meeting chaired by Higher and Technical Education Minister Chandrakant Patil. The Principal Secretary of the department, as well as the Member Secretary and members of the committee, were present at the meeting.
The MoM showed that the honorarium to the member secretary of the committee has been increased from Rs. 10,000 to Rs. 25,000. The honorarium to other members was not considered. Earlier, the court had criticized the paltry remuneration and insufficient support staff given to the committee.
Apart from the accommodation of the committee members, the MoM also raised the issue of travel expenses of the members, since some of them are from outside Mumbai.
Kantharia said that the government will bear the travel expenses and accommodation of the committee members. In addition, the manpower and material required for research and digitization of the works will be outsourced as per requirement.
A proposal has been submitted to the University of Mumbai to provide sufficient space to the committee for conducting its research, added MoM. The HC has directed the committee to hold its next meeting within six weeks.
