Row over Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose's portrait at Rashtrapati Bhavan

A portrait of Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose, unveiled by President Ram Nath Kovind at Rashtrapati Bhavan, was at the centre of a row on Monday with Trinamool Congress and opposition leaders claiming that it was of an actor who played the revolutionary’s part in a biopic.

Though the government did not issue any official statement on the controversy, officials said the portrait unveiled by the President was painted by an award-winning artist Paresh Maity based on a photograph of Netaji shared by his family.

Fact-checker altnews.in called out the error as it found that the portrait unveiled by Kovind was not that of actor Prosenjit Chatterjee, who played the revolutionary hero in the 2019 biopic ‘Gumnami’.

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A row raged as opposition politicians started tweeting to mock the BJP-led government at the Centre for failing to distinguish between a portrait of Netaji and that of actor Prosenjit Chatterjee, who played the revolutionary hero in the 2019 biopic ‘Gumnami’.

“After donating Rs 5 lakhs to the Ram Temple the President honours Netaji by unveiling a portrait of Prasenjit, the actor who played him in a biopic. God save India (because this government certainly can’t),” Mahua Moitra, Trinamool Congress Lok Sabha member said.

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Several Congress functionaries, including Chhattisgarh minister T S Singhdeo, Tamil Nadu Congress working president Mohan Kumarmangalam termed the unveiling of the portrait as a “blunder” as the tussle for West Bengal’s icons intensified ahead of the state assembly elections.

“If the neo-Bengal experts are done making a fool of themselves, outraging over the portrait of Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose, unveiled by the President of India, let me remind them that all their misplaced activism won’t be able to save Mamata Banerjee,” Amit Malviya, in-charge of BJP’s IT Cell said.

Trinamool Congress also distanced itself from Moitra’s remarks on Twitter terming it as her “personal opinion”.

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Most of the political leaders deleted their tweets after the truth of the portrait emerged.

Srijit Mukherjee, the director of Gumnaami, tweeted a picture of Bose, which he said was the basis of the painting by Maity.

“For any similarity of Prosenjit’s look to this photo, the credit goes to Somnath Kundu (the make-up artist for the movie),” he tweeted.

Kovind unveiled the portrait on Saturday to mark Netaji’s 125th birth anniversary.