Visva-Bharati’s eviction order against economist Amartya Sen illegal: Bengal court
The issue has become controversial with the ruling Trinamool Congress (TMC) alleging that Sen was victimised for criticising Centre’s policies
Kolkata: West Bengal’s Birbhum district court on Wednesday passed its verdict in favour of Nobel laureate Amartya Sen saying the April 2023 eviction order by Visva-Bharati university, accusing him of illegally occupying 13 decimals of the 1.38 acres of leased land on the Santiniketan campus, was illegal, lawyers said.
Pratichi, Sen’s ancestral bungalow, stands on this land.
The Prime Minister is the chancellor of Visva-Bharati.
“Sudeshna Dey Chatterjee, the district judge, observed that Visva-Bharati had no right to pass the eviction order,” Gorachand Chakraborty, the economist’s lawyer, told HT.
“We challenged the eviction order saying the law it cited was not applicable at the time when Sen’s father, Ashutosh Sen, took the land on lease from Visva-Bharati. Moreover, the university could not furnish any document relating to the lease agreement executed in 1943,” Chakraborty added.
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Sen’s lawyers moved the Calcutta high court after Visva-Bharati - Bengal’s only central university set up by Rabindranath Tagore in 1921 - passed the order on April 19 last year.
Visva-Bharati’s the then joint registrar and estate officer, A K Mahato, passed the order under the Public Premises (Eviction and Unauthorised Occupants) Act, 1971, saying the university would take possession of 13 decimals or 5550 sq ft of land on the north-west corner of the plot.
In May, the high court ordered an interim stay on the eviction order. The bench of justice Bibhas Ranjan De ruled that no action could be taken on it until the case is heard by the Birbhum district court located in Siuri town.
Sen was in the USA, where he spends most of his time, when the district court passed the verdict in his favour on Wednesday.
In 2022, Visva-Bharati’s the then vice-chancellor Bidyut Chakrabarty triggered a row by claiming that Ashutosh Sen, who was a development commissioner in Delhi and who also served as chairman of the West Bengal Public Service Commission, rented only 1.25 acres on a 99-year lease in 1943.
Sen’s mother, Amita Sen, was a teacher at Visva-Bharati and spent her entire life at Pratichi.
In January 2023, chief minister Mamata Banerjee met Sen during his visit to Santiniketan and handed over a state land and revenue department record showing that all 1.38 acre covered by the property belong to him through a mutation executed in 2006.
Challenging this document, Visva-Bharati went ahead with the eviction procedure. The issue triggered a political tussle in Bengal with the ruling Trinamool Congress (TMC) alleging that Sen was being victimised for criticising certain policies of the Centre.
No Visva-Bharati official commented on the district court order till Wednesday afternoon.
Marred by controversies, Chakrabarty’s five-year term as V-C ended in November last year. The campus witnessed a number of agitations following disciplinary action against teachers and students, most of whom moved the Calcutta high court. Almost all court orders went in favour of these petitioners.
In July last year, a post-graduate student was suspended for an entire semester for writing social media posts in Sen’s support.