Narendra Modi to publicly release declassified files of Netaji today

Saturday also marks his birth anniversary.

Narendra Modi, in his meeting with a delegation of members of Netaji’s family at his residence in New Delhi on  Oct 14, 2015, had announced that the Government of India would declassify the files relating to Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose and make them accessible to public.

Accordingly, the first lot of 33 files were declassified by the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO) and handed over to the National Archives of India on Dec 4, 2015.

Subsequently, the Ministries of Home Affairs, and External Affairs too initiated the process of declassification of files relating to Netaji in their respective collection, which were then handed over to the National Archives of India. Few more files were also transferred from the PMO.

The National Archives of India has been conducting conservation treatment of these files and digitizing them to make the files available on public domain.

The release of the 100 digital copies in public domain will meet a long-standing public demand for access to these files; it will also facilitate scholars to carry out further research on Netaji.

The National Archives of India plans to release digital copies of 25 declassified files on Netaji in public domain every month.

In 1997, the National Archives of India had received 990 declassified files pertaining to the Indian National Army (Azad Hind Fauj) from the Ministry of Defence.

In 2012, it received 1,030 files/ items pertaining the Khosla Commission (271 files/ items) and Justice Mukherjee Commission of Inquiry (759 files/ items) from the Ministry of Home Affairs.

All these files/ items are already open to the public under the Public Records Rules, 1997.

Earlier, in Sep 2015, the West Bengal government declassified 64 files related to Netaji and put them in public domain. The files are now kept in the Kolkata Police Museum.