Netaji row: Cong slams 'sinister propaganda of selective leaks'

Congress today saw a "sinister propaganda of selective leaks and half truths" behind reports that the Jawaharlal Nehru government had snooped on Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose's family members even as it demanded that the government also declassify the files on RSS.

Party spokesperson Abhishek Singhvi said that the Prime Minister and the Home Minister must explain why only 'notings on file' of the two declassified files have been released while withholding the 'correspondence portion' of the same.

"Does the correspondence portion contain some inconvenient truth that the Prime Minister's Office has chosen to withhold?" he added.

Singhvi also alleged that since the Intelligence Bureau (IB) reports directly to the Home Minister, the ruling party was "attempting to malign the great Home Ministers between 1948 to 1968, including Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel and Lal Bahadur Shastri".

Congress's reaction came in the wake of reports that, between 1948 and 1968, Netaji Bose's family was spied upon in Calcutta by IB. Much of the period in question corresponds to Nehru's tenure as Prime Minister.

"Why is BJP trying to malign the great Home Ministers and veteran freedom fighters like Vallabhbhai Patel, C Rajagopalachari, Lal Bahadur Shastri, Govind Ballabh Pant, Gulzarilal Nanda and others?" he said.

Singhvi alleged that "a systematic and sinister propaganda of selective leaks and half truths has been unleashed by the current BJP government to malign national icons who reshaped India's destiny, rewrote its history and made it a great nation today".
Another party spokesperson, Anand Sharma, questioned the "credibility of the selective leak".

"What was the RSS' contribution to the freedom struggle? Those files should also be declassified. RSS was also snooped upon by the British as well as Indian intelligence. It was banned after Mahatma Gandhi's killing," Sharma said, adding that the matter concerning the Netaji files was clearly a "very selective leak".

"We do not know what the details are. Therefore, the credibility is questionable. The Prime Minister and the Home Minister must come out with all the details. It is very clear that for the entire period being referred to, there must have been hundreds of files on this and many other subjects.

"Who were the persons who were taking the decisions, what were the reasons, what was the background? We do not know anything about it," he said.

Alleging that the government was trying to target not only Nehru but also the other icons of the freedom movement, Sharma said it must be kept in mind that "Congress party, its leaders Jawaharlal Nehru, Sardar Patel and all others were ideologically opposed to what the RSS and BJP stand for".

"Therefore, we not only condemn this tactics, but we are very clear that the country must know the details. All the information should be given to the country and Parliament.
"Not only Nehru, it is an attack on many icons. There is politics in it," he said.

Singhvi echoed Sharma's charge, saying that BJP, in its "classic diabolical design", was seeking to malign not only Nehru but also other icons.

"India's history and achievements can never be segregated or looked at separately from the achievements of these great men who were Prime Ministers and Home ministers," he said.

He said that the Prime Minister and the Home Minister should have the courage to come out, make a statement and place the full facts in the public domain.

This, he said, was necessary as the PMO still holds 58 related classified files with Home Ministry having kept a further 29 of these. Thus, a total of 87 files on Netaji Bose that are still classified, he said.

"We demand that all such documents should be declassified so that the complete truth is placed in the public domain," he said.