ওয়াশিংটন বাংলা রেডিও Washington Bangla Radio USA

Kolkata, June 4 (IBNS) West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee said economist Amartya Sen has been invited to head the panel of mentors for Presidency University and historian Sugata Bose will be its chairman.

“Amartya Sen is being made the chief mentor. Sugata Bose will be chairman. I have already spoken to Sugata, who is in Harvard. He has agreed. They will do whatever has to be done — the syllabi and several other things have to be fixed,” Banerjee told reporters at the secretariat Writers’ Buildings here.

However, it was not clear from what Banerjee said, whether she had spoken to Sen on the appointment.

Neither Sen nor Bose could be contacted on Saturday. Sen’s Harvard office said he was away. Bose’s Harvard office said he was overseas.

Nobel laureate Sen and historian Bose, who is also Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose’s grandnephew, are both Presidency alumni.

Bose is now the Gardiner professor of Oceanic History and Affairs at Harvard. He had obtained his PhD from Cambridge. Sen is the Thomas W. Lamont University professor at Harvard.

Chief Minister suggested that the panel of mentors would be given a free hand.

 “We will not interfere,” Banerjee said.

State Higher Education Minister Bratya Basu had said on May 24 that a mentor group on the lines of the one for Nalanda University would be created for Presidency.

A unitary university now, Presidency is saddled with the teachers and infrastructure of the erstwhile college. In the nine months since Presidency’s new status was announced, it has got a Vice-Chancellor, a Registrar and a Council to frame the statutes.

 “Around 200 posts are lying vacant in Presidency,” Higher Education Minister Basu had said while promising to fill all of them in three months.