On the occasion of 119th birthday of Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose, Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Saturday will declassify files as he hopes to bring some closure to the freedom fighter's mysterious disappearance.
The prime minister will release the digital copies of the hidden pages on Netaji in New Delhi in presence of over a dozen members from the Bose family.
Last year, Modi, who met a delegation of members of Netaji’s family at his residence had announced that this government would declassify the files relating to the freedom fighter and make them accessible to public.
In compliance with the said announcement the first lot of 33 files were declassified by the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO) and handed over to the National Archives of India (NAI) on December 4.
Subsequently, the Ministries of Home Affairs, and External Affairs too initiated the process of declassification of files relating to Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose in their respective collection which were then transferred over to the |NAI. Few more files were also transferred from the PMO.
As a first step, the NAI is placing 100 files relating to Netaji in public domain after preliminary conservation treatment and digitization.
On the occasion of the birth anniversary of Netaji, the Prime Minister will release the digital copies of these files in public domain. This will meet the long-standing public demand to access these files and it will also facilitate scholars to carry out further research on Netaji.
The NAI further plans to release digital copies of 25 declassified files on Netaji in public domain every month.
However, not many are optimistic about finding missing puzzle pieces in Netaji mystery.
While the two commissions of inquiry had concluded that Netaji attended martyrdom in a plane crash in Taipei on August 18, 1945, the third one contradicted that. Most of the members of the Netaji family are also reluctant to accept the 70-year-old plane crash theory.
It remains to be seen, whether the new Netaji files will solve or further deepens the mystery.
