Amartya Sen alleged by Vishwa Bharati as “illegal occupant” in Santiniketan, Mamata Banerjee appeals to intellectuals to protest

West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee on Thursday appealed to intellectuals to build up a protest against the Vishwa Bharati’s alleged attack on Nobel laureate Amartya Sen. “He is under attack because he has objected to several policies of the BJP, ideologically. For a person who has brought such honour to the country, this kind of attack is uncalled for,” she said.

Viswa Bharati authorities have written to the West Bengal government alleging that several plots have been wrongly recorded in the names of private individuals, and the list of “unauthorised occupants” as prepared by the university includes Nobel laureate Amartya Sen, according to a report by The Times of India.

Banerjee said that the Vishwa Bharati authorities will have to seek forgiveness for this attack on Sen. “I regret that these people don’t even know how to show respect to a person like Amartya Sen,” Banerjee said. She said that during her upcoming visit to Bolpur, she will protest the various attacks on Bengal by the BJP. She referred to the BJP’s Twitter account quoting the party chief JP Nadda that Rabindranath Tagore was born in Shantiniketan (he was born in Kolkata, then Calcutta). Banerjee added that she would demand response to every single insult, and would bring up these issues during a political march in Bolpur on December 29.

Sen, in his response to TOI’s query said that “The Visva-Bharati land on which our house is situated is on a long-term lease, which is nowhere near its expiry, but the vice-chancellor can always dream about evicting anyone he wants.” According to the TOI report, the wrongly recorded plots also includes the girls’ hostel, academic department, office and the VC’s official bungalow. The report says that in Prof Sen’s case the university has stated that there is unauthorised occupation of 13 decimals of land and 125 decimals legally leased to his late father by the Vishwa Bharati authorities. It says that this has happened because of the wrong recording of ownership in the government’s “record of right” (RoR) and university land has been illegally transferred where private individuals have set up schools, restaurants and other businesses.