In fresh face-off, Bengal govt stops Visva-Bharati from blocking road on campus
Visva-Bharati vice-chancellor Bidyut Chakrabarty and the ruling Trinamool Congress (TMC) have been at loggerheads over several issues since August last year.
The Birbhum district administration in West Bengal on Friday stopped the Visva-Bharati authorities from blocking a road that passes through the state’s only Central university campus and serves as a shorter route for residents of the town.
Visva-Bharati vice-chancellor Bidyut Chakrabarty and the ruling Trinamool Congress (TMC) have been at loggerheads over several issues since August last year. The acrimony touched a new low recently when the university accused Nobel laureate economist Amartra Sen of illegally occupying some of its land. While addressing a TMC rally at Bolpur on December 29, chief minister Mamata Banerjee sharpened her attack on Chakrabarty, calling him a “stooge of the BJP.”
The district police on Friday stopped construction workers from building a wall on the road, marking the second such incident since August when the Visva-Bharati authorities’ bid to construct a wall around the annual fair ground was thwarted by public and political resistance.
“The university should form a committee, comprising me or any district official, local residents as well as people who live on campus. All decisions should be taken though discussion. A road cannot be blocked this way as it is extremely difficult for elderly people to take a 5-km detour,” Birbhum district magistrate Dr Vijay Bharti told the media on Friday. He visited the campus as well.
The district administration also took possession of the road and handed it to the state public works department.
The district superintendent of police, Shyam Singh, said the authorities did not seek any permission from the local administration before deciding to block the road and did not contact the administration either after construction of the wall was stopped.
HT contacted the Visva-Bharati authorities for their reaction but no statement was made by any official till 6 pm. There were reports that the authorities also locked up a room used by former students.
Trouble broke out at Visva-Bharati for the first time in August last year when a large crowd, comprising local residents and shopkeepers and headed by some TMC leaders, demolished two gates on the campus and damaged construction material stocked by the authorities to build a wall around an open ground where an annual fair is held.
The fair, popularly known as Poush Mela, held towards the end of December, draws thousands of people and even foreign tourists. Opposed to the wall, local people and traders, for whom the fair is a major source of income, staged demonstrations. In 2019, the vice-chancellor, also removed some temporary shops that continued to do business even after the fair was over. He deployed private security agencies to guard the campus.
After the alleged vandalism in August, 2020, the university authorities closed the campus temporarily. The chief minister disapproved the wall and said, “I do not want any construction that destroys the beauty of Visva-Bharati. The governor called me to seek the state’s intervention. I told him that when Rabindranath Tagore built Visva-Bharati he wanted students to be in the heart of nature and study in the open while listening to birds. He did not want wood and cement structures.”
Visva-Bharati was set up by Rabindranath Tagore in 1922. Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who is the present chancellor, virtually addressed the centenary celebration on December 24 and Union home minister Amit Shah spent around two hours on the campus on December 20, the day he led a big roadshow of the BJP in Bolpur town.
