After being
accused of illegally possessing land at the Visva-Bharati, Nobel laureate
Amartya Sen lashed out at the university’s vice chancellor and accused him of
acting at the behest of the Centre “with its growing control over Bengal,” PTI reported. 

Sen was born in 1933 at
Santiniketan, which is home to Visva-Bharati, the university founded by
Rabindranath Tagore. On Thursday, media reported that the university has
written to the West Bengal government alleging dozens of land parcels owned by
it were wrongfully recorded in the names of private parties including Sen. This
happened on the same day when Prime Minister Narendra Modi addressed the
centenary celebrations of Visva-Bharati.

The following
day, Sen issued a statement asserting that the land on which his house is situated is
entirely on a long-term lease that was nowhere close to expiry.

“Additional
land was bought by my father as free hold and registered in land records under
mouja Surul,” he said.

He also accused the university’s
vice chancellor of being “empowered” by the centre.

“I could
comment on the big gap between Santiniketan culture and that of the V.C.,
empowered as he is by the central government in Delhi with its growing control
over Bengal,” Sen wrote in the statement.

Meanwhile, West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee expressed
pain and
anguish at recent developments and said the accusations were untrue.

“This pains me,
and I want to express my solidarity with you in your battles against the
bigotry of the majoritarians in this country, the battles that have made you an
enemy of these forces of untruth. Kindly count me as your sister and friend in
your just war against intolerance and totalitarianism,” she wrote in her
letter to Sen.