The controversy over whether or not Nobel laureate Amartya Sen made a phone call to Visva-Bharati Vice-Chancellor Bidyut Chakrabarty, requesting him not to evict hawkers from outside his ancestral home in Santiniketan, refuses to die down. Following this, the VBUFA president had written to Professor Sen, asking him whether he had indeed spoken to the VC over the phone. The VBUFA president then emailed Professor Sen once again, asking him whether he was in India in June 2019, considering that the call was made from a local number. To this email, the Nobel laureate replied last Tuesday: “I was not in India at all in June 2019. His claim that we have talked on the phone and I introduced myself as Bharat Ratna is tantalisingly untrue.”

Source: The Hindu January 01, 2021 11:30 UTC