Kolkata: The Visva-Bharati authorities have served a notice to Nobel laureate Amartya Sen asking him to submit a written reply by 12 pm on 19 April on why he shouldn’t be evicted from his ancestral home in Santiniketan, West Bengal. A day prior, the executive magistrate court of Bolpur had directed the state police to ensure status quo on the land in question.
According to the notice served Friday, an earlier noticed dated 17 March had allowed for a representative of Sen to attend the varsity’s show-cause hearings.
While Sen authorised two advocates to deal with the matter, the notice says the latter had only sought time, and never submitted any statement showing cause and didn’t bother to “appear in any of the two hearings scheduled on 29 March and 13 April”.
The three-page notice, signed by Visva-Bharati joint registrar and estate officer A.K. Mahato, was pasted on a wall of Sen’s ancestral home, Pratichi. Sen is currently in Boston.
Visva-Bharati Vice Chancellor Bidyut Chakrabarty told ThePrint Saturday, “This is done as per law of the land which is evident if you read the notice in between the lines.”
Birbhum District Magistrate Bidhan Ray, meanwhile, said that he had received no instructions so far to interfere in the matter.
Thursday’s court order had directed the police to prevent the university from taking possession of any part of the property “until the case is disposed of in court”. It had added that status quo would prevail on the plot on which Pratichi stands till 6 June when the case will be heard again in the presence of representatives of both Sen and Visva-Bharati.
Since January, Visva-Bharati has sent three letters to Sen, ordering him to hand over 13 decimals of land he had been “illegally” occupying, apart from the 125 decimals leased to his family. That same month, West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee had given Sen land-related documents stating that the plot leased to his father Ashutosh Sen spanning 138 decimals included the contentious 13 decimals on which the family built Pratichi.
“This is my residence which was built on leased land from Visva-Bharati in the 1940s. The land was leased out to us for 100 years. Some of the land was also bought by my father from the market following all rules and regulations. There was no danger of overstaying,” Sen had told reporters at his home in Santiniketan in January this year.
(Edited by Smriti Sinha)
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