Failed to retain glory of Visva Bharati, says VC

Visva-Bharati Vice Chancellor Bidyut Chakraborty, in the eye of the storm over a host of issues including his allegation that a section of teachers and non-teaching staff was responsible for the varsity's downslide admitted on Sunday that he has failed to retain the glory of the august institution.

Chakraborty, who took over the reins of the central varsity in 2018, said Tagore's Visva Bharati is longer what it used to be, as its heritage has not been well protected. "I have always asserted that Visva-Bharati belongs to all of us. It is our collective responsibility to protect the legacy of Gurudev Rabindranath Tagore. But we have not been able to perform that responsibility," he said at a function on the university campus.

"We failed to protect the heritage of Visva-Bharati. We have not been able to keep Tagore's Visva-Bharati as it should have been. It leaves the future generation with a big responsibility..." he added.

The VC recently courted multiple controversies over his decisions, such as building boundary fence around the Pous Mela ground and accusing Nobel laureate Amartya Sen of occupying Visva-Bharati land illegally. In an open letter last month, after the varsity fell from the 37th position to the 50th in the National Institutional Ranking Framework (NIRF) report, he had said that several stakeholders did not perform their roles effectively, leading to the downswing. The Visva Bharati University Faculty Association, in its reply, said Chakraborty was "unfairly putting the blame on stakeholders while absolving himself of any responsibility".