Varsity slapped with legal notice

Kolkata: Nobel laureate Amartya Sen has finally sent a legal notice to the Visva Bharati University authorities asking the latter to tender a public apology for their derogatory comments in connection with the continuing row over 13 decimals of land occupied by him.

Sen's counsel Gorachand Chakroborty informed media persons on Saturday that a globally acclaimed educationist like Professor Sen is being defamed by raising baseless allegations against him about illegally having possession of 13 decimals of land in excess of its legal entitlement for 1.25 acres. "The university authorities should apologise for making such derogatory comments. Else appropriate legal actions will be taken," Chakroborty said.

On Thursday, the university authorities sent a letter to Professor Sen seeking two days of time for measuring the quantity of land he is occupying. Referring to that letter, Professor Sen told newspersons that the requirement of fresh measurement of land is useless, since 13 decimals of land will remain the same even after that measurement.

"The question that arises is not what we get from measuring land. The question is whose land it is. Better measurement will not answer that question and the real issue interpretation of ownership and use," he said.

Since the dispute over the 13 decimals of land arose, Professor Sen has repeatedly clarified the original 1.25 acres was gifted to his grandfather Kshitimohan Sen, who was the second Vice Chancellor of Visva Bharati University by none other than the university founder Gurudev Rabindranath Tagore and later his father late Asutosh Sen, who was also a professor with the same university, purchased the remaining 13 decimals of land, which is at the centre of the dispute. On January 30, West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee went to Professor's Sen residence at Bolpur-Santiniketan and handed over to him the land holding records of the state Land & Land Reforms Department, which shows his legal entitlement over the entire 1.38 acres of land that he is occupying. She also described the developments as a "definite attempt by a section of the educationists to saffronise everything and insult the Nobel laureate".

However, even after that university Vice Chancellor Bidyut Chakroborty continued with his salvos against Professor Sen.