4 INA veterans to take part in R-Day

Ajay Banerjee 
Tribune News Service
New Delhi, January 22 

The Republic Day parade this year will witness a unique event as four veterans of Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose’s Indian National Army (INA) will be there in participation. There is no record of any such honour to the INA in the past. 

The quartet, Laltiram (98) from Chandigarh; Parmanand (99), Hira Singh (97) and Bhaagmal (95), all from Gurugram, will get the place of pride in a jeep that will be in the parade sequence immediately after Param Vir Chakra (PVC) awardees, sources confirmed to The Tribune. 

The PVC is the country’s highest battle-time honour instituted post-Independence. Only 21 persons have received the award so far.

The jeep carrying the PVC awardees is the first in the pecking order of the military march past down the Rajpath in New Delhi. The jeep carrying the PVC awardees comes immediately after the IAF helicopters that fly overhead.

Netaji quit as the Indian National Congress president in 1939 and formed the Forward Bloc before heading off to Germany after he had escaped from Kolkata. On October 21, 1943, he proclaimed the establishment of a provisional independent Indian government named the Azad Hind government and ‘Azad Hind Fauj’ (INA).

Bose and the INA entered India with the Japanese and marched into Kohima in March 1944 before being defeated by the British. Netaji is believed to have died in a plane crash in August 1945.

In October last year, Prime Minister Narendra Modi had, while commemorating the 75th anniversary of the proclamation of the Azad Hind government by Bose, met some INA veterans.