The 125th birth anniversary of Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose seems to have whipped up a flurry of controversies. After a miffed West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee accused the BJP of “insulting” her with chants of Jai Shri Ram during her speech at the birth anniversary celebrations of Netaji at Kolkata’s Victoria Memorial, a portrait of the freedom fighter shared by President Ram Nath Kovind has now sparked a Twitter row.

As soon as Kovind shared a picture of Netaji on his Twitter handle on Monday to mark the leader’s birth anniversary, Twitteratti pointed out that the photo was that of Bengali actor Prosenjit Chatterjee, who had played Netaji in the 2019 biopic Gumnami.

President Kovind unveiled the portrait of Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose at Rashtrapati Bhavan to commemorate his 125th birth anniversary celebrations.

While BJP sources said that the portrait, painted by Paresh Maity, a Padma awardee, was based on an actual photograph given to the artist by Netaji’s family, the rumours were put to rest after the freedom fighter’s grand-nephew Chandra Kumar Bose, also a BJP member confirmed the same.

“Portrait unveiled by the Hon’ble President of India-Shri Ram Nath Kovind ji @rashtrapatibhvn is based on #Netaji’s original photograph. It’s an artists impression of #Netaji,” he tweeted.

Before Bose’s clarification, several Trinamool Congress leaders took to Twitter to post about the ‘misplaced’ portrait, but deleted their tweets later.

“After donating ₹5 lakhs to the Ram temple, the President honours Netaji by unveiling a portrait of Prasenjit, the actor who played him in biopic God Save India (because this government certainly can’t),” tweeted TMC MP Mohua Moitra.

After TMC leaders like Moitra had to eat their own words, it was the BJP turn to give back.

“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…” tweeted BJP’s social media head Amit Malviya.

The only good thing that emerged out of the spat was the recognition given to makeup artist Somnath Kundu, whose impeccable makeup in Prosenjit-starrer film led to the confusion.

However, some Twitter users soon claimed that it was actually a picture of actor Prosenjit Chatterjee, who played Netaji in the Srijit Mukherjee directed film Gumnaami.

Since it was posted on 23 January, the issue has been gaining more attention, as more people on Twitter claim that the President committed a major gaffe.

Despite this, it's been confirmed that the picture was actually of Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose and not the actor people thought it was.

Image obtained from Twitter