Visva Bharati University asks Amartya Sen to vacate 13 decimals of land by May 6

Visva Bharati University has asked Nobel laureate Amartya Sen to vacate the 13 decimals of land he allegedly occupied unauthorisedly. Visva-Bharati University has issued an eviction order asking him to vacate the land by May 6 or within 15 days of the publication of the last order on April 19.

According to the government of India advisories and CAG reports, the century-old central institution was in urgent need of getting control of encroachments and also submitted the report to the ministry; the notice reads, "Amartya Kumar Sen and all concerned persons are liable to be evicted from the said premises, if need be, by use of such force as may be necessary."

The notice issued by Joint Registrar Ashok Mahato states, “It is decided that 13 decimals of land having the dimension of 50 ft x 111 ft in the north-west corner of the scheduled premises is to be recovered from him. Thus, he can lawfully occupy 1.25 acres of land only as lessee (for the residual period of lease) in the scheduled premises. He does not have the authority to occupy 1.38 acres of land in the scheduled premises.”

Some days back, the central university had issued another notice to Sen, whose ancestral house 'Pratichi' is in Santiniketan, the doyen of developmental economics comes to stay when he visits Santiniketan. The university, in this notice, had given him time till April 19 to respond to the notice and vacate the "unauthorised" portion of land or face necessary action otherwise, according to the news agency PTI reports.

The university had maintained that Sen's reply to earlier notice was "fallacious, factually incorrect" and Visva Bharati was the rightful owner of all these lands which had been encroached upon in past years, including the 13 decimal land occupied by Sen.

Sen has repeatedly trashed the charge, saying while the 1.25 acres of land had been leased by Visva Bharati to his father for a certain period, his father bought the contentious 13 decimals, and he has all the necessary documents to prove that. 

In 1998, Amartya Sen received the Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences for his contributions to welfare economics, restoring an ethical dimension to economics.

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