Jaitley kicks up row, tweets tribute to Netaji on his 'death anniversary'

New Delhi: Union Finance Minister Arun Jaitley on Thursday kicked up a storm by paying tribute to Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose on his supposed death anniversary.

Jaitley’s Twitter account paid tribute to Bose, but the tweet was quickly deleted. However, it failed to escape the attention of West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee, who quickly described it as a ‘hurtful tweet’ and claimed that ‘we’re all hurt’.

Meanwhile, Netaji's grand-nephew Chandra Bose, who joined the BJP just before the Bengal election earlier this year, demanded an apology from Jaitley for the tweet.

Jaitley’s tweet is probably the first acknowledgement by the BJP government that Subhas Chandra Bose indeed died in a plane crash on August 18, 1945.

Jaitley's tweet, which was deleted soon, kicked up a storm with Mamata Banerjee quickly labelling it hurtful.

The subject of Netaji’s death has become a big controversy in India, with three separate inquiries reaching two different conclusions. While two government inquiries concluded that Bose had died in an air crash, a third one disagreed.

Many historians believe that Bose died in the plane crash, but some members of Bose’s family as well as many people from Bengal believe he escaped and was silenced by the Congress after Independence.

For a long time, a certain ‘Gumnami Baba’ living in Faizabad in UP, was believed to be the Indian freedom fighter Bose. He died in 1985 but his identity as Bose was never confirmed.

The debate intensified recently when some secret files on Netaji became public and indicated that the Jawaharlal Nehru government spied on his family after his 'disappearance'.

In September last year, Mamata Banerjee made public 65 files on Netaji. Soon after, the Centre started making public files on Netaji.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi met with members of the Bose family last October and assured them he would seek cooperation from other countries to obtain more secret files on the freedom fighter.