Sacked ex-Visva-Bharati officiating VC given key role by Bengal govt.

She has been appointed as chief advisor of Bolpur municipality, of which Santiniketan is a part.

Sabujkoli Sen, a former professor at Visva-Bharati who was sacked by the present administration just two days before her retirement in August last, has been appointed as the chief advisor of the Bolpur municipality, of which Santiniketan is a part. Professor Sen, who was popular in the university as a teacher of philosophy, had served as the officiating Vice Chancellor (VC) in early 2018. Her appointment can be seen as a move by the Trinamool Congress government to counter current VC Bidyut Chakrabarty, who reports to the Central government and who has ruffled many feathers within the campus as well as in Santiniketan ever since he assumed office in November 2018. “Today, in Santiniketan, only 10% of the area comes under Visva-Bharati [the only Central university in West Bengal] and the remaining 90% under the municipality. My top priority will be to work for the development of this 90% — which includes villages that were under the panchayat until recently — in keeping with the aesthetic values of Rabindranath Tagore,” Professor Sen told The Hindu on Thursday.