Mukherjee's extension was opposed by 57 scholars and think tanks who petitioned Manmohan Singh to revive the museum so that it again becomes 'India's pre-eminent centre of dispassionate scholarship in humanities and social sciences'.

In a letter, they demanded that 'once the present director Mridula Mukherjee's term ended in August, her successor must be chosen through an open transparent process'.

The signatories to the letter included Rajmohan Gandhi, Sunil Khilnani, Sanjay Subrahmanyam, Ramachandra Guha, Nayanjot Lahiri, Sumit Sarkar, Krishna Kumar, Partha Chatterjee, Sugata Bose and Nivedita Menon.