Netaji files: Next set to be released after Budget session ends

New Delhi: The second tranche of 25 secret files on Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose will be released after the conclusion of Budget session of Parliament, Culture Minister Mahesh Sharma said on Friday. “There is lot of curiosity among people about the life of Netaji. We are ready with the set of 25 secret files on Netaji that will be released after Parliament session,” Sharma told reporters on the sidelines of an event to mark the culmination of 125th foundation year celebrations of National Archives of India (NAI). The Budget session would conclude on 13 May subject to exigencies of business. [caption id=“attachment_2530308” align=“alignleft” width=“380”]  Subhash Chandra Bose. Reuters[/caption] As many as hundred secret files were made public by Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Netaji’s 119th birth anniversary on 23 January. NAI Deputy Director Sanjay Garg said National Archives is converting the second set of files into digital form for the public. “We have received the second tranche of 25 files on Netaji from Culture Ministry. We are in the process of making their digitalised copy,” he said. The files released last month, comprised over 16,600 pages of historic documents, ranging from those from the British Raj to as late as 2007, an official had said. NAI also opened a dedicated website to store all the declassified files related to Bose. In October 2015, Prime Minister Narendra Modi had met the family members of Netaji and announced that the government would declassify the files relating to the leader whose disappearance 70 years ago remains a mystery. While two commissions of inquiry had concluded that Netaji had died in a plane crash in Taipei on 18 August, 1945, a third probe panel, headed by Justice MK Mukherjee, had contested it and suggested that Bose was alive. Meanwhile, Sharma also launched the emblem of NAI, besides releasing its commemorative coin of Rs 125 and a circulating coin of Rs 10 during the event. A commemorative postal stamp of Rs 5 and a DVD containing private papers of Amiya Nath Bose, brother of Netaji, was also presented to the minister. PTI