As many as 304 academicians, including two American Nobel laureates, have written to President Droupadi Murmu, criticising Visva-Bharati University Vice-Chancellor Bidyut Chakrabarty for allegedly targeting economist Amartya Sen by asking him to vacate a parcel of land which the institution claims he has been occupying illegally. In April, the university had issued an eviction notice asking Sen, a Nobel laureate himself, to vacate 13 decimals (0.13 acre) of the 1.38 acres of his ancestral home, 'Pratichi', located on the university campus in Santiniketan of Birbhum district, claiming the parcel belonged to the institution and that he was occupying it illegally. Sen had then moved the Calcutta High Court against this and the matter is still sub judice. In their letter, the academicians comprising Nobel laureates George A. Akerlof and Joseph Stiglitz wrote, “Prof Chakrabarty is responsible for various atrocities. He was responsible for the unlawful suspension of students and teachers, illegal termination of the employment of faculty members, officials, and other staff, denying them freedom of speech, and suppressing dissent in any form, by indiscriminately issuing show-cause notices, charge-sheets, and illegal orders of suspension and termination.” Both Stiglitz and Akerlof, along with Michael Spence, jointly won the Nobel for economics in 2001. “The latest target of his draconian rule is Prof Sen, an alumnus of Visva-Bharati. Of late, (the university) issued a series of letters, using indecent language, to Prof Amartya Sen alleging that he illegally grabbed the land of Visva-Bharati, which they cannot substantiate,” the letter said. While the Prime Minister is the ex officio Chancellor of the central university, the President is its paridarsaka (Visitor). “In the letters issued by the Visva-Bharati administration, it has been claimed that the concerned lease deed was executed for 1.25 acres of land, but that Mr. Sen possesses 1.38 acres of land… Ironically, a document attached with one of the letters issued to him by the Visva-Bharati administration exhibits that 1.38 acres of land have been legally recorded in the name of Ashutosh Sen, the father of Mr Sen," it read. "Recently, the same land was mutated in Sen’s name by the state government. According to Prof Sen, his father bought some land in addition to the leased land. In an RTI reply to Nilkantha Mandal, Visva-Bharati did not provide authenticated copy of the lease deed on the grounds of “third-party information,” the letter said.
