A Birbhum court on Wednesday set aside a Visva-Bharati order that had asked Nobel laureate Amartya Sen to vacate 13 decimals of land, which according to the central university was under his illegal occupation, in Santiniketan.

"The court today set aside the eviction order that Visva-Bharati issued to Professor Sen on April 19 last year. The varsity authorities failed to point out which 13 decimals of land my client had been illegally occupying. That is why the court set aside the eviction order," said Soumendra Roy Chowdhury, the senior counsel who was present in the court of Birbhum district judge Sudeshna De (Chatterjee) on behalf of Sen.

Roy Chowdhury was accompanied by three other lawyers while the judge passed the order.

In her 26-page order, the judge mentioned that the showcause notice and the eviction order issued to Sen were "erroneous" and "not according to Law".

"Therefore the impugned notice (asking Sen to show cause why he would not be evicted) dated 17.03.2023 as well as action taken by the respondents (Visva-Bharati) asking the appellant (Sen) for showing cause and evicting him from 13 decimals of land under his occupation vide the order of respondent no. 1 (Visva-Bharati estate officer) dated 19.04.2023 are found to be erroneous and not according to Law and thus, not legally sustainable and liable to be set aside," the court order reads.

Gitikantha Majumdar, who was closely monitoring Sen's land-related developments in Santiniketan, claimed that the court's verdict made Sen happy.

"I called him this evening to inform him about the court's verdict. He said that the news made him happy. He said 'ami khub khusi holam (I became very happy)'," said Majumdar.

Visva-Bharati had been accusing Sen of illegally occupying 13 decimals of land out of 1.38 acres of Pratichi, the ancestral home of the Nobel laureate in Santiniketan, since January last year. Sen was served at least three notices from January 24, 2023, before the varsity authorities served him the eviction order on April 19 of the same year.

Accusing Sen, particularly on the grounds of alleged land encroachment, became a political and social issue. Many from different spheres of society considered the purported attack on the renowned economist as an attempt to entangle him in controversy because of his anti-BJP stand.

Many on the campus also believed that the idea of harassing Sen was the brainchild of the then Visva-Bharati vice-chancellor (VC) Bidyut Chakrabarty, who had been accused of trying to satisfy his bosses in Delhi for an extension of his five-year tenure.

After Visva-Bharati accused him of the illegal occupation of the 13 decimals of land, Sen said the charges were "false". Chief minister Mamata Banerjee handed over land documents to the Nobel laureate by paying a visit to his ancestral home in January last year.

Teachers and students on the campus hit the streets against the harassment of one of the esteemed alumni of the institution.

"Today's verdict by the Birbhum district judge is a victory for those teachers, students of Visva-Bharati and hundreds of academics, including other Nobel laureates from across the globe, who protested against the harassment against a person like Professor Sen. Former VC Bidyut Chakrabarty and people close to him falsely levelled such a wild allegation. We demand that all of them who humiliated the great economist apologise in public," said Sudipta Bhattacharyya, the president of the Visva-Bharati University Faculty Association (VBUFA).

Visva-Bharati officials, however, said they had the option to move a higher court challenging the order of the district judge. "We are yet to get a copy of the order. There will be a meeting to discuss the order with top varsity officials to decide whether we will take any further legal course," said Ashok Mahato, the Visva-Bharati estate officer who issued the eviction order against Sen. Mahato is also the acting registrar of Visva-Bharati.

A section of senior varsity officials said the current administration led by acting VC Sanjoy Kumar Mallik was less interested in continuing the legal battle against Sen.

"I will comment only after reading the verdict," Mallik told journalists.

Supriya Tagore, a descendent of Rabindranath Tagore's family, said: "The former VC Bidyut Chakrabarty should return the varsity's money that he spent to harass Amartya Sen."