The district judge of Birbhum on Tuesday issued an interim stay on an order issued by Visva-Bharati in which it had directed the eviction of Nobel laureate economist Amartya Sen from a stretch of land at his ancestral home Pratichi in Santiniketan.

A source said that Sudeshna De (Chatterjee), the district judge of Birbhum, also sought the land records and other materials from Visva-Bharati that had prompted the central university to issue the eviction order.

She also fixed the next day of the hearing on September 16.

"The (Birbhum) court has prima facie found that there may have been some irregularities in the eviction order and that is why it stayed the order.... The court has already sought a detailed report from Visva-Bharati to assess the grounds on which the authorities served the eviction notice to Professor Amartya Sen," said Soumendra Roy Chowdhury, the counsel present in the court on behalf of Sen.

Central varsity officials, however, said the interim stay on the eviction order did not mean that the legal process was over.

"It's an interim order.... And the court of the district judge has sought the LCR (lower court records or records maintained by the lower court) in the meanwhile," said Visva-Bharati advocate Surcharita Biswas.

Visva-Bharati had served an eviction order to Sen on April 18, asking him to vacate 13 decimals of land — which the central varsity claimed that the economist was illegally occupying — by May 6. Sen's house, Pratichi, is built over 1.38 acres. The university claimed that 13 decimals or 0.13 acre of the land belonged to it.

Sen then moved Calcutta High Court, demanding a stay on the eviction order.

On May 4, the high court stayed the eviction notice till the Birbhum court disposed of the case.

Over 300 academics, including two American Nobel Laureates George A. Akerlof and Joseph Stiglitz, had recently signed a petition, seeking steps against the Visva-Bharati administration for harassing the 89-year-old world-renowned economist in his hometown Santiniketan.