Modi to release 100 files related to Netaji

New Delhi: Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Saturday will release digital copies of 100 files related to Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose following the government's decision to declassify files on the freedom fighter.

The files, digitised and given "preliminary conservation treatment" by the National Archives of India, will be released on the birth anniversary of Netaji. 

The culture ministry said the National Archives plans to release digital copies of 25 declassified files on Netaji every month. It said Modi told members of Netaji's extended family in October last year that the government would declassify the files. The first lot of 33 files were declassified by the Prime Minister's Office and handed over to the National Archives on December 4, 2015.

Later, the home ministry and the external affairs ministry also initiated the process of declassification of files relating to Netaji in their respective collection that were then transferred to the National Archives. The release of the files "will meet the long-standing public demand" and "will also facilitate scholars to carry out further research on Netaji", a culture ministry statement said.

The National Archives received 990 declassified files pertaining to the Indian National Army (INA) from the defence ministry in 1997. Netaji, one of the leading lights of the Indian freedom struggle, had set up the INA during World War II to take on the British Indian Army. A former Congress president and once a close associate of Mahatma Gandhi, Bose's reported death in a plane crash in Formosa, now Taiwan, in 1945 has remained a mystery.

Source: IANS