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Varsity talk on BJP rout scrapped after protest An invitation letter for the open-to-all online lecture was uploaded on the Visva-Bharati’s website late on Tuesday
Visva-Bharati’s plan to hold an online lecture on May 18 to delve into the reasons for the BJP’s electoral debacle in Bengal had to be cancelled within 12 hours of its announcement on Tuesday following protests from various quarters, including Prime Minister and chancellor Narendra Modi’s nominee in the university’s executive council.
Sources said Visva-Bharati vice-chancellor Bidyut Chakrabarty had taken the initiative to hold an online lecture to analyse “Why BJP failed to win West Bengal Assembly Election?”.
A notice inviting people to attend the lecture to be held at 4 pm on May 18 via Zoom platform was posted on the central university s website earlier in the day.
SANTINIKETAN: A notice on a lecture uploaded on the Visva-Bharati website on Tuesday went missing on Wednesday afternoon, hours after it was placed in the public domain.
The topic was “Why BJP failed to win West Bengal assembly elections”. VB, a central university, had invited Sanjay Kumar, co-director of Lokniti, a research programme at Centre for the Study of Developing Societies (CSDS), to deliver the lecture on May 18. Vice-chancellor Bidyut Chakrabarty was scheduled to preside over the lecture. Accordingly, the joining link for the Zoom meeting was also in the public domain. This was the first time VB had arranged a lecture on an overtly political topic.
The Visva Bharati University campus. File Photo.
Its disappearance was as unexpected as its appearance, leaving questions unanswered and the field open for people to make guesses and also, perhaps, putting a question mark on the Bidyut Chakrabarty’s future as the Vice-Chancellor of the Santiniketan-based Visva-Bharati.
On Wednesday morning, a notice was uploaded on the university website, inviting people to the next lecture in its lecture series, to be held virtually on the evening of May 18. The lecture was to be delivered by Professor Sanjay Kumar, Joint Advisor at Niti Aayog, and presided over by Professor Chakrabarty himself. The subject of the lecture: ‘Why BJP failed to win West Bengal Assembly Elections?’