Prime Minister Narendra Modi being presented a portrait of Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose by the family members, at 7, Race Course Road, in New Delhi on Wednesday. (Press Trust of India photo)
The Centre will declassify its secret files on Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose next year, Prime Minister Narendra Modi said today, after hosting 35 members of the leader's family at his 7 Race Course Road residence.
The process, PM Modi said, will begin on January 23, the 118th birth anniversary of the leader whose disappearance 70 years ago still remains a mystery.
He also tweeted,
At the meeting with Netaji's family, the PM said, "History cannot be written correctly if information on Netaji is not released."
He said India will also request foreign governments to declassify files on Netaji and that he would request the Russian government to release the files during his trip to that country in December.
The family says secret files on Netaji exist in Russia, Japan, China, America, UK, Japan, Singapore and Malaysia and has requested the Prime Minister to write to these countries for their declassification.
The home ministry is already working on declassification of files, the PM said, adding that on January 23, the first set of files that are being examined, will be declassified.
The Centre has been under pressure since the West Bengal government declassified 64 secret files on Netaji last month.
"Successive governments have suppressed all documents and it is the call of the nation that the documents be revealed," Netaji's grand-nephew Chandra Kumar Bose had told NDTV ahead of the meeting.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi during a meeting with the family members of Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose in New Delhi on Wednesday. Union ministers Rajnath Singh and Sushma Swaraj are also seen. (Press Trust of India photo)
Netaji's daughter Anita Bose Pfaff, who had been unable to attend the meeting, told NDTV that though she personally felt that it was most likely that her father had died in a plane crash, she was "happy" that the files were being declassified, since the family needed closure.
Senior BJP leader Siddharth Nath Singh rejected the idea that PM Modi had agreed to declassify the files following Bengal's lead. The Prime Minister, he said, had told the family that he asked his office to look into the matter after it rejected an RTI query as per a standard practice.
The Prime Minister had announced the family's visit in his monthly radio address 'Mann Ki Baat' on September 20, describing it as a "momentous occasion".