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Home » India » Nobel laureate Amartya Sen reacts to Visva-Bharati list of ‘illegal plot holders’

Nobel laureate Amartya Sen reacts to Visva-Bharati list of ‘illegal plot holders’

Visva-Bharati has written to the West Bengal government alleging that dozens of its plots have been recorded wrongly in favour of private parties with the list of unauthorised occupants prepared by the varsity including Nobel laureate and eminent economist Prof Amartya Sen.

By Newsd
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Visva-Bharati has written to the West Bengal government alleging that dozens of its plots have been recorded wrongly in favour of private parties with the list of unauthorised occupants prepared by the varsity including Nobel laureate and eminent economist Prof Amartya Sen.

The girls’ hostel, academic department, office, even the VC’s official bungalow find mention in the list of plots recorded incorrectly. The university alleges that due to wrong recording of ownership in the government’s record-of-right (RoR), the university’s land has been illegally transferred and private parties have set up restaurants, schools, and other businesses on land procured by Rabindranath Tagore himself.

In Prof Sen’s case, the varsity has said there is an unauthorised occupation of 13 decimals of land, in addition to 125 decimals legally leased to his late father by Visva-Bharati. Sen said: “I see from your report that Vice-Chancellor Bidyut Chakrabarty of Visva-Bharati is busy arranging the ‘eviction of unauthorised occupation of leased land in the campus’ and that I have also been named in the list of occupants.

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 Visva-Bharati’s estate office, such erroneous records were prepared in the 1980s and 1990s. Most of these plots are located in the Purvapalli area of Santiniketan, known to be the residential hub of asramites (families associated with the asrama school and Visva-Bharati during their inception) and eminent persons.

Documents with Visva-Bharati’s offices and also sent to the ministry of education (MoE) and the CAG revealed the proportions to which the encroachment of the university land reached in the late 1990s. Prof Sen in 2006 wrote to the then vice-chancellor for transfer of the 99-year-old lease-hold land to his name and this was done after a decision was taken by the Executive Council but the excess land was not returned to the university.

A confidential internal report, issued to various offices by the estate office of Visva-Bharati in July 2020, states that the university has taken up the matter of correction of ownership record of 77 plots of land.
Unauthorised occupants from leased plots of Purvapalli/ Dakshinpalli/ Sripalli areas to be evicted. These are very high profile people,” the reports states. VC Bidyut Chakrabarty refused to comment on the matter saying, “I will not like to talk to the media on matters related to Visva-Bharati administration.

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