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Calcutta: On Sunday, BJP leader Suvendu Adhikari took a strong stance against Visva-Bharati vice-chancellor Bidyut Chakrabarty over two plaques that had been installed on the central university campus without Rabindranath Tagore's name on them.

The marble tablets announce the addition of Santiniketan in the Birbhum region to the World Heritage List of Unesco. VC Chakrabarty and Chancellor Narendra Modi's names are on the plaques.

However, the name of Visva-Bharati's creator, Tagore, was missing from the plaques.

The head of the opposition in the assembly, Adhikari, declared: "We cannot compromise with Rabindranath Tagore's name."

"I saw the pictures of the plaques, and the vice-chancellor ought not to have allowed his pride to stand in the way of fixing those that bear Tagore's name." After attending a Mann Ki Baat telecast event at Sonachura in Nandigram, his Assembly constituency, he said, "As Indians and people of Bengal, we have sentiments and emotions about our respected personalities like Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose, Swami Vivekananda, and Rabindranath Tagore."

The Trinamul Congress is trying to take advantage of the BJP's growing unease about the matter, as seen by the remark.

Adhikari's remark essentially restated the chief minister's remarks on Thursday.

There should not be any disagreement on this matter since acknowledging Rabindranath Tagore is the main topic. The vice-chancellor cannot be unyielding about this if he committed the error. Adhikari said, "There is no reason I can not speak thus about the matter when Trinamul has already done so.

After Visva-Bharati missed Mamata Banerjee's deadline of 10am on Friday to remove the plaques and replace them with new ones that included Tagore's name, Trinamul has been staging protests in Santiniketan for the last three days.

She sent junior forest minister Birbaha Hansda and transport minister Snehasis Chakraborty to participate in the protest on Sunday.

According to a prominent Trinamul politician, Mamata gave the party explicit instructions to step up its campaign against the BJP and VC Chakrabarty.

According to the Visva-Bharati authority, new plaques will take their place and the current ones are just temporary.

Adhikari's remark, according to several university administrators and Santiniketan locals, demonstrated that even the BJP was not pleased with the VC's actions.

"Adhikari is the face of the BJP in Bengal and a very significant politician. According to Sudipta Bhattacharyya, president of the Visva-Bharati University Faculty Association, "it shows the BJP does not endorse the act of Chakrabarty, who was trying to please Narendra Modi to get an extension after November 8, his last working day after the five-year tenure."

A few handwritten posters demanding that Chakrabarty remain the VC were discovered on campus on Sunday morning. The posters were from an unidentified organization called the "Visva-Bharati Bachao Committee."

Trinamul said that Chakrabarty's friends were responsible for creating the posters.

In a related incident, Chakrabarty sent Mamata a four-page letter requesting that she once again give Visva-Bharati authority over a 3.1-kilometer stretch of road. The state government took control of the road in 2021.