Failed to retain glory of Visva Bharati, says VC

Visva-Bharati Vice ChancellorBidyut Chakraborty, in the eye of the storm over a host ofissues — including his allegation that a section of teachersand non-teaching staff was responsible for the varsitysdownslide — admitted on Sunday that he has failed to retainthe glory of the august institution.

Chakraborty, who took over the reins of the centralvarsity in 2018, said Tagores Visva Bharati is longer what itused to be, as its heritage has not been well protected.

“I have always asserted that Visva-Bharati belongs toall of us. It is our collective responsibility to protect thelegacy of Gurudev Rabindranath Tagore. But we have not beenable to perform that responsibility,” he said at a function onthe university campus.

“We failed to protect the heritage of Visva-Bharati.

We have not been able to keep Tagores Visva-Bharati as itshould have been. It leaves the future generation with a bigresponsibility…” he added.

The VC recently courted multiple controversies overhis decisions, such as building boundary fence around the PousMela ground and accusing Nobel laureate Amartya Sen ofoccupying Visva-Bharati land illegally.

In an open letter last month, after the varsity fellfrom the 37th position to the 50th in the NationalInstitutional Ranking Framework (NIRF) report, he had saidthat several stakeholders did not perform their roleseffectively, leading to the downswing.

The Visva Bharati University Faculty Association, inits reply, said Chakraborty was “unfairly putting the blame onstakeholders while absolving himself of any responsibility”.

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