Educationists give joint petition to Prez Murmu against VBU VC
Statesman | 11 June 2023
Over 300 eminent educationists from country and abroad have sent a mass petition to President Droupadi Murmu seeking action against vice-chancellor of Visva Bharati University (VBU), Professor Bidyut Chakraborty allegedly for Nobel laureate Amartya Sen.
âThe grandfather, father and mother of Amartya Sen were very close to the first Nobel Laureate in Asia, Rabindranath Tagore. Amartya Sen himself has made the country proud and has won the highest civilian award of the country, Bharat Ratna in 1999. But despite that the present vice-chancellor has been continuously trying to defame him and has levelled charges of land grabbing by him at Santiniketan,â the petitioners claimed.
The petitioners further added that Professor Amartya Sen differs on certain issues with the central government and also raised his voice over running the central varsity, which has recently dropped to the 97th ranking.
President Droupadi Murmu is the visitor of VBU and Prime Minister Narendra Modi is the chancellor of VBU. In recent times, VC Bidyut Chakraborty has taken a number of controversial steps and has suspended faculty members and students. Professor Chakraborty has claimed that he is trying to restore the land belonging to VBU which is grabbed by outsiders.
He has sent notices to the house of Amartya Sen several times and the matter is in court now. The signatories included Professor Abhijit Choudhury, Institute of Post Graduate Medical Education and Research, Alaka Acharya of JNU, Ambikesh Mohapatra of Jadavpur University, Arnab Haldar of Presidency University, Atanu Sengupta of Burdwan University, Arpita Bhattacharya of Lady Brabourne College, Debabrata Dasgupta, former VC of Bidhan Chandra Agricultural University, Supriyo Tagore, member of the Tagore family etc. Persons from abroad included Professor Antony D Costa of University of Alabama, Huntsville, Abinash Kumar, University of Edinburgh, Bibhas Saha of Durham University, former bureaucrat Jahar Sircar etc.
Chief minister Mamata Banerjee has also supported Amartya Sen on this issue and has visited his house and handed him papers of his Pratichi house. She has also provided him Z Plus security and a police outpost has been set up outside his house in Santiniketan. There has been no reaction available from neither VBU nor the VC on the issue.