President on three-day visit to Jharkhand, Bengal

President Pranab Mukherjee will inaugurate the centenary year celebration of ‘Jhalda Satyabhama Vidyapith’ in West Bengal’s Purulia district on Wednesday.

He will reach Jhalda via Ranchi in Jharkhand, an official statement said.

On the same day, he will also inaugurate the 60th anniversary celebrations of the Netaji Research Bureau at Kolkata and unveil the restored ‘Wanderer Car’ used by Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose on his ‘Mahanishkraman’ (The Great Escape) in January 1941.

On January 19, the President will inaugurate the 28th Dantan Gramin Mela-2017 at Dantan in Paschim Medinipur district. On the same day, he will also attend the 35th anniversary celebrations of a Bengali newspaper ‘Aajkaal’ at Kolkata.

On the last day of his visit, the President will inaugurate the Bengal Global Business Summit-2017. He will also inaugurate the bicentenary celebrations of the Hindu School as well as the Presidency University at Kolkata before returning to Delhi.

The President will also unveil the fully restored car in which Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose had made his ‘great escape’ from his ancestral home here in 1941, while under house arrest by the then British government on Wednesday.

The German Wanderer sedan of 1937 make has been restored to its 1941 look by automobile giant Audi and is now in excellent running condition, Krishna Bose, wife of Netaji’s nephew Sisir Kumar Bose, said.

“The President will flag off the car tomorrow (Wednesday), which was last driven by my husband Dr Sisir Bose for a shooting of a Japanese news channel in 1978 after it was gifted to Netaji Research Bureau by our family in 1958 and kept for visitors there,” the former Lok Sabha MP said.