Trinamool Congress and Congress Twitter handles poked fun on January 25, stirring a controversy that the portrait of Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose, unveiled by President Ram Nath Kovind at Rashtrapati Bhavan, was actually that of actor Prosenjit Chatterjee who played the iconic freedom fighter in Bengali film Gumnaami. The tweets had to subsequently be withdrawn when the government released the original photo provided by Bose’s family. The portrait was made by artist Paresh Maity.
Srijit Mukherji, director of Gumnaami, said that he had uploaded the real photograph on the basis of which the painting at Rashtrapati Bhavan was done by Maity. He added that it was one of the photographs they had based their look on for Gumnaami.