After Netizens raised questions on the Netaji portrait unveiled by President Ram Nath Kovind on Saturday saying that the portrait is of Prosenjit Chatterjee, the actor who played the role of Netaji in his biopic "Gumnami", the grandnephew of Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose, Chandra Kumar Bose, on Monday took to Twitter to clarify the controversy.
"This is the original photograph of Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose, based on which renowned artist Shri Paresh Maity has drawn the portrait which was unveiled at Rashtrapati Bhavan on 23 Jan 2021, by Hon’ble President of India-Shri Ram Nath Kovind ji," the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader said along with a picture of the freedom fighter.
Among those who had questioned the portrait, which was recently unveiled at Rashtrapati Bhawan, was Trinamool Congress leader Mahua Moitra. "After donating ₹5 lakhs to the Ram temple the President honors Netaji by unveiling a portrait of Prasenjit, the actor who played him in biopic God Save India (because this government certainly can't)," she said in the tweet which has now been deleted.
Several posts on Twitter that made a similar claim have now been removed.
BJP's social media chief Amit Malviya, in-charge of Bengal, posted a sharp rejoinder: " 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..."
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">President Kovind unveils the portrait of Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose at Rashtrapati Bhavan to commemorate his 125th birth anniversary celebrations. <a >pic.twitter.com/Y3BnylwA8X</a></p>— President of India (@rashtrapatibhvn) <a >January 23, 2021</a></blockquote> <script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
In his role as Netaji, Bengali movie star Prosenjit Chatterjee bears a striking resemblance to the renowned freedom icon in the 2019 film and he reportedly used prosthetics for his transformation.
The claim that his portrait is up as Netaji's at Rashtrapati Bhavan inspired several memes and jokes on Twitter, with people calling for the inauguration of a portrait of Ben Kingsley as Mahatma Gandhi and Vivek Oberoi as Narendra Modi.
Finally, the actor himself tweeted, effectively clamping a lid on the controversy.
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">Would like to congratulate Paresh Maity for the wonderful piece of art in remembrance of our National hero Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose. As an Actor,I’m elated that people thought,that the painting resembles my character in Gumnami,dir. by <a >@srijitspeaketh</a> and prosthetics by Somnath <a >pic.twitter.com/HBkXvwFFSw</a></p>— Prosenjit Chatterjee (@prosenjitbumba) <a >January 25, 2021</a></blockquote> <script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
The intense conflict on Subhas Chandra Bose is ongoing between BJP and TMC due to the upcoming West Bengal 2021 elections.