Forced to review engagement with India Today: Prez Press Secy to Purie

New Delhi, Jan 30 : President Ram Nath Kovind’s Press Secretary has written to Aroon Purie, chairman and editor-in-chief of the India Today Group, describing the controversy over the Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose portrait as a “rather shameful” and said that the episode has “caused deep distress and we are forced to review our engagements with the group.” In a hard hitting letter to Poorie on January 27, Ajay Kumar Singh, Press Secretary to the President, said, “I am writing to you with reference to a needless and avoidable and rather shameful controversy in which a section of journalists, including some from the Indian Today Group, dragged the Rashtrapati Bhavan for motives not clear to us.” He said, on January 23, the President unveiled a portrait of Bose at Rashtrapati Bhavan as part of Netaji’s 125th birth anniversary celebrations.
“A section of journalists, including Rajdeep Sardesai, a prominent representative of India Today as well as many more from the group headed by you, reacted to this announcement on Twitter by alleging that the portrait was not that of Netaji but of actor Prosenjit Chatterjee,” Singh said.
The letter to Purie came after the matter went viral on Twitter and social media, with some people tweeting alleging that the “President unveiled the official portrait of actor Prasenjit Chatterjee (Bumbada) and not Netaji at the Rashtrapati Bhawan”.
The government has decided to observe January 23 as ‘Parakram Divas’ from now on every year. Bose was born in 1897.