Visiting Sen at his Santiniketan residence ‘Pratichi’, Banerjee handed over a state land and income division file, which states that 1.38 acres of land lined by the economist’s ancestral property belongs to him by advantage of a mutation executed in 2006.
The Visva-Bharati College (VBU) had in December 2020 named Sen in a listing of unlawful occupants on its campus in Santiniketan. Then in January this 12 months, the college and Sen exchanged letters on the problem, after which the CM stepped in.
Banerjee additionally introduced Z+ safety for Sen. With out naming the Visva-Bharati’s Vice-Chancellor, she strongly criticised him, speaking concerning the “saffronisation” of the college.
“I’ve been silently watching how an eminent citizen was being insulted all lately. I requested my officers to get the land data. I gave him proof that the land was transferred to his father in 1943. No man within the garb of the Bharatiya Janata Party ought to insult Amartya Sen. We have a look at Visva-Bharati via the eyes of Tagore, not via a saffron lens,” stated Banerjee.
The land dispute
Visva-Bharati not too long ago launched a press release saying that “the knowledge and paperwork shared with Prof Sen vide our letters dated 24-01-2023 and 27-01-2023 make it amply clear that 1.38-acre land was by no means leased to late Ashutosh Sen [Amartya’s father]. Just one.25-acre land was leased to late Ashutosh Sen. Following the applying dated 31-10-2005 (which was supported by probated will of late Ashutosh Sen and different paperwork), lease of just one.25 acre land was mutated in his favour, for the residual interval of lease tenure, as permitted by the Govt Council of the College in its assembly dated 03-09-2006.”
Amartya Sen’s maternal grandfather Kshitimohan Sen, a Sanskrit scholar of reputation, was invited to Santiniketan by Rabindranath Tagore in 1908. He performed a key position in constructing the Visva-Bharati — arrange in 1921 — together with Tagore. Sen, born in 1933, was named Amartya by Tagore.
Amartya Sen’s home in Santiniketan, Pratichi. (Picture: Wikimedia Commons)
On the college campus, plots got to many eminent individuals on a 99-year lease because the time of Tagore. Sen grew up in Pratichi, the home constructed by his father, and visits it continuously.
Kshitimohan Sen was the second Vice-Chancellor of Visva Bharati. Sen’s father, Ashutosh Sen, was a professor on the college, and he bought sections of the land on the centre of the dispute.
The latest letters from the college
Visva-Bharati authorities on January 24 issued a letter to Sen, asking him at hand over elements of the plot. On January 27, the college issued a second letter with the identical demand.
“You might be in possession of 1.38 acres of land which is in extra of your authorized entitlement of 1.25 acres. Kindly return the land to Visva-Bharati as early as attainable because the software of the legal guidelines of the land will trigger embarrassment to you and in addition to Visva-Bharati which you endear a lot,” learn the letter dated January 27.
Amartya Sen’s reply
Sen wrote to Visva-Bharati V-C Prof Bidyut Chakraborty two days later, saying that his father had bought the free-hold land from the market and never from Visva-Bharati, they usually have been paying taxes for it.
He additionally despatched a authorized discover to the V-C, asking him to withdraw “your false allegation made to the information businesses {that a} plot of land owned by Visva-Bharati is unlawfully occupied by me.”
He additional wrote within the letter, “To measure the realm of our homestead, Pratichi, to check with the long run lease of land taken by my father in 1940 from Visva-Bharati… This sudden abuse of an 80-year-old doc is clearly a crude try at harassment or worse.”
He additionally stated, “Amongst different errors it ignores the large reality, which I’ve acknowledged many occasions (even within the context of this dispute), {that a} substantial quantity of free-hold land was bought by my father (available in the market — not from Visva-Bharati) so as to add to our homestead on which khajna and Panchayat taxes are paid by me yearly.”
The politics round it
When the college first named Sen amongst unlawful occupants in 2020, Mamata had backed the Nobel laureate.
After that, in August 2022, sections of the TMC were unhappy with Sen when he stated he wouldn’t have the ability to settle for the state authorities’s Banga Bibhusan award as a result of he was overseas, however accepted the Muzaffar Ahmad Memorial Prize at a CPM occasion weeks later.
Nonetheless, this 12 months, the celebration warmed as much as him once more after Sen stated Banerjee had the flexibility to change into India’s subsequent Prime Minister. Quickly after Sen’s interview, Banerjee, talking to a information channel, responded, “Amartya Sen is a world-renowned mental. His insights present us the trail. His recommendation is an order for us. His analysis of the current scenario of the nation must be taken critically by everybody.”
Simply after Sen’s assertion on Banerjee, the land dispute row flared up once more, and the TMC claimed this was as a result of “Sen turned an enemy of the College as he praised Banerjee”.
The CM’s nephew and TMC Normal Secretary Abhishek Banerjee stated, “The assertion made by the Vice-Chancellor of Visva Bharati is extraordinarily unlucky. The principle purpose behind the transfer was that Amartya Sen had praised CM Mamata Banerjee. BJP leaders can not settle for this, which is why they’re focusing on him.”
