A day after Subramanian Swamy demanded that Nalanda University chancellor Amartya Sen be prosecuted for indulging in corruption during his term, the Nobel laureate rubbished all the charges made by the BJP leader.
“All the charges made by Swamy are in fact false, mistaken and reflects Swamy’s lack of concern with truth,” Chie Ri, Sen’s faculty assistant at Harvard University, told Deccan Herald on behalf of the Nobel laureate on Wednesday.
This came in response to an e-mail sent to Sen on Tuesday, seeking his reaction on the charges levelled by BJP leader. Sen’s assistant suggested that the Nobel laureate was not in a position to respond to the e-mail as he was in Bangladesh.
Dismissing Swamy’s claim that Sen was paid an annual tax free salary of Rs 50 lakh in USD, the Nobel laureate’s assistant said the noted economist worked for Nalanda University in an “entirely honorary capacity”.
“Professor Sen receives no salary whatsoever as chancellor of Nalanda University, contrary to what Swamy says,” Ri added. On Swamy’s observation that Sen enjoys a free ride on Air India to visit India from abroad, Ri said it was actually a decision taken by BJP patriarch Atal Bihari Vajpayee when he headed the National Democratic Alliance government at the Centre.
“The complimentary travel he gets from Air India has nothing to do with his association with Nalanda (University) but comes from a decision of the government of India, led by Prime Minister Vajpayee in 1999, to celebrate of Sen’s receiving the Nobel Prize in Economics in December 1998,” he said
He also rejected Swamy’s charge that former president A P J Abdul Kalam resigned from the post of visitor at the university in 2011 because he was disgusted by and objected to Sen’s arbitrariness and malafide actions.
“Kalam’s not becoming the visitor of Nalanda University was, as he explained, because the position was meant for the President of India, which he had been earlier but no longer was at the time he declined the request. Kalam’s successor, as the President of India, became the visitor.”
