A petition had challenged amendments made to the original trust deed allowing Sonia to be president for life and certain trustees to be life trustees.

Following the court order, what's under a cloud now is a complex of partly constructed buildings: six theatres, three art galleries, two museums devoted to folk and tribal culture, a cultural archive, a reference library, research and publication wing and a data bank. All are housed in the sprawling 25-acre IGNCA complex being built with a government grant of Rs 100 crores on a plot estimated to cost Rs 5,000 crores.

The Department of Culture's show-cause notices, expected to be issued next week, are being examined by the legal department.The draft notices state that, ``the government will be initiating appropriate proceedings...to ensure that the interests of the government are protected in respect of the moveable and immovable property made available by the government to the IGNCA, including resumption of land.''

Those likely to be served notices include Sonia Gandhi, P V Narasimha Rao, R Venkatraman, Manmohan Singh, H Y Sharda Prasad and Ram Niwas Mirdha.

Interestingly, on June 5 1995, Rao had sanctioned the amendments in the trust deed registered in March 1987. The original deed granted a 10-year tenure to the trustees and the president but these amendments made Sonia Gandhi president for life. The President of India was also a ``visitor'' to the institution who could set up committees on the functioning of the Indira Gandhi National Centre for Arts and these reports were binding on the trust.

Records show that no one, including then Union Human Resource and Development Minister Madhav Rao Scindia raised any objections to theamendments.