Kolkata
Visva-Bharati appears to be contemplating action against a vocal teachers’ body that recently brought to light a controversial claim made by its Vice-Chancellor about a call he supposedly received from Nobel laureate Amartya Sen.
During a virtual meeting with faculty members on December 9, Vice-Chancellor Bidyut Chakrabarty openly claimed that he had received a call from Prof. Sen, who introduced himself as “Bharat Ratna Amartya Sen” and requested that hawkers around his Santiniketan house not be evicted as his daughter, who visited Santiniketan often, would be inconvenienced.
Following this, Visva-Bharati University Faculty Association (VBUFA) president Sudipta Bhattacharyya had emailed Prof. Sen, who denied making any such call or request to the Vice-Chancellor.
The Nobel laureate’s reply, which became public, also said that the “Visva-Bharati often interferes too much with the normal life of ordinary people, of which setting up walls to interfere with ways and passages of people is a good example.”
Visva-Bharati has now served a show-cause notice on the VBUFA president, accusing him of interacting with the media without approval of the authority and in violation of office orders/notifications.
“You are hereby requested to explain why such acts of yours should not be treated as indiscipline, insubordination and violations of service conditions and conduct rules/regulations and why disciplinary action should not be taken against you,” said the notice, served on Friday on the VBFUFA president, who is a professor of economics and politics.
Simultaneously, a notification was issued on the Visva-Bharati website asking faculty members to let the university know whether they were formally associated with the VBUFA. They are required to respond by Monday; in case they don’t, then — according to the notification — “it will be presumed that they are not linked with it.”
The VBUFA, formed in January 2014, is a voluntary association of faculty members of Visva-Bharati University and has 320 members. It is scheduled to hold a general body meeting on Saturday evening, when members will deliberate on the notification. According to sources, they are most likely to agree on not responding to it.
