In a statement issued on Friday, Chairman of the NCPA Council J J Bhabha defended Mehta and her `open door policy'. He refuted various charges levelled against the functioning of the NCPA, especially during the last five years when Mehta was at the helm of the Centre.

At a meeting on June 23 the premier art institution was severely criticised by the city's Marathi-Hindi-Gujarati-English theatre fraternity. Theatre bigwigs like Hindi producer-director Dinesh Thakur, Gujarati producer Girish Desai, English theatre critic Jiten Merchant, Marathi director Chandrakant Kulkarni, playwright Prashant Dalvi, social activist Pushpa Bhave, former assistant director, NCPA, Dr Ashok Ranade had cited no archiving of productions, stopping of programmes like the Theatre Development Project,no training workshops, no new schemes and the rise of bureaucracy among the various ills that ail the NCPA.

Bhabha's signed statement lists the new concept of an open forum called Chauraha, the Morarka Centre for Research and Revival of Crafts, the Jindal Arts Creative Interaction Centre (JACIC) besides the seminars and workshops on the various performing and visual arts as NCPA's achievements under Mehta. The statement further refers to Mehta's `open door policy' that has enabled many a professional to approach the NCPA with their proposals and implement them. "The NCPA's policy of open dialogue continues vigorously and the Executive Director and her staff always been available for discussing new projects."

The statement takes strong exception to the claim that the Theatre Development Project commenced with ethno-musicologist Dr Ranade's involvement. It explains its position behind the closure of the aforesaid project that was funded by the Ford Foundation. (The Foundation) "extended the duration of thegrant from the initial period of two years to a much longer final period... ending with the last request for extension up to December 1996 from Dr Vijaya Mehta herself as Executive Director of the NCPA," the statement said.

The controversy regarding the functioning of the NCPA and Mehta's alleged high-handedness was first triggered off when Mehta sacked two of NCPA's permanent employees Chetan Datar and Sucharita Apte. Bhabha's statement says that they were sacked because the work of the project was over and "they (Datar and Apte) declined to take up alternative employment in another department". It answers charges regarding the buildings in the NCPA premises (about 32,000 sq mts) as well. "The State Government's permission to construct on the NCPA's existing plot an apartment building was given on the condition that 50 per cent of the net surplus would be paid to the Maharashtra Government and 50 per cent of the net surplus would be paid to the NCPA, to be invested in State Government's Securities, so asto yield the income required by the NCPA for its objects."