The
Hindu: New Delhi: Sunday, 20 September 2015.
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| Urban Development Minister Venkaiah Naidu: "I personally feel that people of the country have the right to know the truth on the Netaji issue". File photo V. Sudershan |
A day after
West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Bannerjee declassified 64 government files on
Subhas Chandra Bose and challenged the Narendra Modi government to open similar
files with the Centre, two Union Ministers, both former BJP presidents, struck
a note of caution.
In Hyderabad,
Parliamentary Affairs Minister M. Venkaiah Naidu said: “The West Bengal government
has made public certain confidential files related to Netaji. It is good … It
needs to be studied before the Centre takes such a decision, (because of) its
impact on the international community, our relations with other countries …”
In Delhi,
Union Surface Transport Minister Nitin Gadkari, answering questions during a
television programme, said: “The Prime Minister and the Home Minister will have
to take a final call on [whether to open the files].”
Mr. Naidu and
Mr. Gadkari prefaced their remarks by saying they “personally” felt that the
people of the country had the right to know the truth, especially the
mysterious circumstances surrounding his death. Simultaneously, they urged Ms.
Banerjee not to “politicise” the issue.
If the
Ministers were cautious, the BJP MP and former Home Secretary, R.K. Singh, was
more forthright on Thursday: he said it would have been better if Ms. Banerjee
had consulted the Centre or the External Affairs Ministry before taking the
decision to declassify the files.
Modi
government rejected RTI plea
The BJP which
has over the years been dipping into the Congress’s pantheon of icons from the
freedom struggle, both to enlarge its own constituency and target the Congress
and the Nehru-Gandhi family, had spoken of the need to declassify the Netaji
files in the run-up to the 2014 elections. In January 2014, when the BJP was
still in the Opposition, Rajnath Singh, now Union Home Minister, demanded
declassification of all Netaji files during a visit to Cuttack. But the Modi
government refused an RTI application for the disclosure, saying it would
adversely affect India’s relations with friendly foreign nations.
On Friday,
BJP secretary in charge of West Bengal Sidharth Nath Singh argued: “The files
held by the West Bengal government are mostly related to the snooping by the
Congress government on Netaji’s family, whereas the Centre has to deal with the
files relating to four foreign countries.”
So, while the
BJP justifies its decision, and the Congress maintains its classic ambivalence,
Chief Minister Mamata Bannerjee appears to have scored for the moment.
‘Congress
owes an apology’
Condemning
the “act of snooping” by successive Congress governments on the family members
of Netaji, his grand nephew Chandra Bose on Saturday said the party should
apologise to the nation as it was done during their regime after Independence.
“The act of
snooping was done during Congress regime. So the Congress should own the
responsibility and apologise to the nation,” Mr. Bose told PTI.
It was
revealed from the declassified files on Netaji that the police used to keep a
tab on the activities of his family members even after Independence.
Bose also
sought to know if letters written by Netaji’s wife Emilie Schenkl to his family
members from Vienna were read and tampered with. Questions have been raised
whether some specific portions of those letters were deliberately torn.
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