If Visva Bharati tries to bulldoze Amartya Sen’s house, I’ll sit there: Mamata

Last week, the Visva Bharati passed an eviction order against Sen stating that on May 6 it will take possession of .13 decimal of the 1.38 acres of leased land covered by Sens’s ancestral property

West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee on Wednesday said if Visva Bharati authorities try to bulldoze the house of Nobel laureate Amartya Sen, she will stage a sit-in demonstration to resist it at Santiniketan in Birbhum district.

Set up in 1921 by Rabindranath Tagore, Visva Bharati is West Bengal’s only central university. (Facebook | Mamata Banerjee)

“Amartya Sen is being attacked every day. I have seen the audacity, that they will bulldoze Sen’s house. If they bulldoze the house, I will sit there. Let me see. If they do it, I will be the first person to go there. I want to see who is more powerful – bulldozer or the people,” she said while speaking to media persons at the state secretariat.

Last week, the Visva Bharati passed an eviction order against Sen stating that on May 6 it will take possession of .13 decimal of the 1.38 acres of leased land covered by Sens’s ancestral property on the campus at Santiniketan.

On January 30, Banerjee met Sen at ‘Pratichi’, the house built by his father, and handed over a state land and revenue department record showing that all 1.38 decimal covered by the property belong to him through a mutation executed in 2006.

The document was challenged by Visva Bharati.

Since 2022, vice-chancellor Bidyut Chakrabarty has been claiming that the economist’s father, Ashutosh Sen, who was a professor at Visva Bharati, had rented only 1.25 acres of land on a 99-year lease in 1943 and thus, the remaining .13 decimal should be returned to the university.

Sen had earlier challenged the Visva Bharati’s claims stating that the latter’s claim on part of the leased land had no legal standing.