Birbhum district court grants relief to Amartya Sen, stays Visva-Bharati eviction notice

 The stay would remain clamped till the primary case to determine the ownership of the disputed plot is settled by the Calcutta High Court, the district court directed

Amartya Sen

Sougata Mukhopadhyay, TT, Calcutta, 08.08.23  : Offering a temporary reprieve to Professor Amartya Sen in the ongoing and murky land dispute, the Birbhum district and sessions court in Suri granted a stay on the eviction notice Visva-Bharati’s had served to the Nobel Laureate from the disputed 13 decimal plot within Pratichi, Sen’s ancestral home in Santiniketan.

The stay would remain clamped till the primary case to determine the ownership of the disputed plot is settled by the Calcutta High Court, the district court directed.

The fact that the order going against Visva-Bharati came on the day of Rabindranath Tagore's death anniversary could just be coincidental.

The order was passed on Monday by Sudeshna Dey Chattopadhyay, Birbhum district judge, following eight rounds of hearings on a petition moved by Sen challenging the notice put up by Visva-Bharati authorities on the boundary walls of Pratichi in April this year which served him an appearance ultimatum before the varsity authorities for disposal of proceedings on the controversial plot and called him “alleged unauthorized occupant”.

The court also directed Visva-Bharati authorities to submit detailed documents based on which the university had served the said notice to Sen. The documents would have to be submitted in court by September 16.

Challenging the district court restraint order, the university is mulling moving the High Court, it was learnt.

Sen’s counsels reportedly made their arguments against the eviction notice based primarily on two grounds. First, the petitioner questioned the authority of AK Mahato, Joint Registrar of Visva Bharati and Estate Officer, who signed the said notice. Soumendra Roy Chowdhury, advocate appearing for Sen, argued whether Mahato’s appointment was made by means of a gazette notification which would grant him the necessary authority to sign such a notice.

Secondly, the petitioner highlighted the “inability of Visva-Bharati authorities to pinpoint the exact location of the disputed plot” within Pratichi which the institution proposed to reclaim from Sen.

“I have come to the understanding that the alleged unauthorized occupant does not want to face this inquiry; rather he wants to subvert or bypass this proceeding by other means including initiating proceedings at other forum,” the April notice signed by Mahato had stated while adding, “Based on the facts aforesaid, I decide that no further opportunity of showing cause or attending personal hearing shall be allowed to the alleged unauthorized occupant.”

Visva-Bharati’s arguments in court harped on Sen ignoring multiple appearance summons before the authorities which left the institution no choice but to issue the ultimatum.

“The university could provide no satisfactory evidence before court that Prof Sen was indeed illegally occupying 13 decimals of land. They said their claim was based on a joint survey of the plot conducted by Visva-Bharati and Sen’s family back in 2006. The document they produced before the court in support of that claim was incomplete and failed to satisfy the court. They also failed to satisfactorily answer the judge’s question that even if, for argument’s sake, the university’s claims were true, why was it serving an eviction notice so many years later,” said Gitikantha Majumdar, Sen’s aide and caretaker of Pratichi.

“I believe that the vice chancellor is doing all this out of his political compulsion to satisfy his bosses in Delhi,” Majumdar remarked.

Visva-Bharati authorities said they had no comments to make about the development in Suri court.