SNUBBED// Nobel laureate Amartya Sen has withdrawn his candidature for a second term as Nalanda University chancellor, saying the Narendra Modi government does not want him to continue in the chair. Sen, who has been critical of Modi, in a letter to the Governing Board of the University, blamed the absence of government’s approval for delay in nod for him to continue at the post of Chancellor. “Non-action (by government) is a timewasting way of reversing a board decision, when the government has, in principle, the power to act or not act... It is hard for me not to conclude that the government wants me to cease being the chancellor of Nalanda University after July, and technically, it has the power to do so,” Sen was clearly miffed as he spared no chance to take a potshot at the Centre: “I am also sad, at a more general level, that academic governance in India remains so deeply vulnerable to the opinions of the ruling government, when it chooses to make political use of the special provisions. Even though the Nalanda University Act, passed by the Parliament, did not, I believe, envisage political interference in academic matters, it is formally the case — given the legal provisions (some of them surviving from colonial days)— that the government can turn an academic issue into a matter of political dispensation, if it feels unrestrained about interfering.”