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By P.Ok.Balachandran/Sunday Observer
Colombo, April 7: On April 1, within the midst of an election marketing campaign, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, accused the opposition Congress get together of surrendering Katchathivu island to Sri Lanka when it was in energy in 1974.
Referring to an info secured by the Tamil Nadu BJP chief Ok. Annamalai utilizing the Proper to Info Act, Modi mentioned that it was the Congress beneath Prime Minister Indira Gandhi which had handed over Katchathivu to Sri Lanka in 1974.
He described the invention as “startling” however not shocking because it was a part of the Congress’s constant coverage of weakening India’s integrity. He dubbed the choice on Katchathivu as “callous” and added that it angered each Indian.
“We will’t ever belief Congress. Weakening India’s unity, integrity, and pursuits has been Congress’ manner of working for 75 years and counting,” Modi mentioned on X. Aiming on the DMK, the ruling get together in Tamil Nadu, he mentioned: “Rhetoric apart, DMK has accomplished NOTHING to safeguard Tamil Nadu’s pursuits. New particulars rising on Katchathivu have UNMASKED the DMK’s double requirements completely.”
“Congress and DMK are household items. They solely care that their very own little children’ rise. They don’t look after anybody else. Their callousness on Katchathivu has harmed the pursuits of our poor fishermen and fisherwomen particularly.”
The Indian Prime Minister cited a report in Instances of India which claimed that the then Chief Minister of Tamil Nadu M. Karunanidhi had given his concurrence to the settlement regardless of his get together’s public posturing in opposition to the 1974 Katchathivu deal.
Leaping into the fray, Exterior Affairs Minister S Jaishankar slammed the Congress and DMK, saying that ceding it to Sri Lanka resulted within the seizure, detention, or apprehension of numerous Indian fishermen and fishing vessels by Sri Lanka.
“The Congress and the DMK, have approached this matter as if they don’t have any duty for it, as if the state of affairs is for at present’s central authorities to resolve. We now know not solely who did it but in addition who hid it,” he charged.
Addressing the media, Dr. Jaishankar quoted former Exterior Affairs Minister Swaran Singh’s 1974 as saying in Parliament: “I really feel assured that the settlement demarcating the maritime boundary within the Palk Bay shall be thought-about as honest, simply and equitable to each international locations. On the similar time, I want to remind the honourable members that in concluding this settlement, the rights of fishing, pilgrimage and navigation, which either side have loved previously, have been totally safeguarded for the long run.”
However in lower than two years (that’s in 1976), Dr Jaishankar added, there was one other settlement between India and Sri Lanka wherein India proposed that the fishing vessels and fishermen of India shall not interact in fishing within the historic waters, the territorial sea and the unique zone of Sri Lanka.
“In 1974, assurance is given. By 1976, an settlement is concluded which supplies away this assurance. The consequence was that, 6,184 Indian fishermen have been detained within the final 20 years. In the identical interval, 1,175 Indian fishing vessels have been seized by Lankans,” Jaishankar mentioned.
The Katchathivu challenge, Jaishankar mentioned, has been repeatedly raised in Parliament by varied events over the previous 5 years. “In truth, the Chief Minister of Tamil Nadu has written to me quite a few instances. My document exhibits that I’ve replied to the present Chief Minister (MK Stalin) 21 instances on this challenge. This isn’t a difficulty which has abruptly surfaced. This can be a reside challenge,” he mentioned.
“However the Congress and DMK have approached the matter “as if they don’t have any duty. We imagine that the general public has a proper to know the way this example happened. We all know who did this, how the state of affairs arose. What we have no idea is who hid this, what has been hid from the general public,” Jaishankar mentioned.
![](https://newsin.asia/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Katchathivu-island.jpg)
Palk Strait and Palk Bay
India’s declare, he defined, was that Katchathivu island belonged to the Raja of Ramnad and that he had it from the British period. In a while, his rights moved to the Madras authorities.
“The Indian view was additionally that there was no documentary proof that Sri Lanka had an unique title,” Jaishankar mentioned. However the Sri Lankan argument was that that they had data going again to the seventeenth century.
Congress Riposte
Responding to Modi’s scathing remarks, Congress President Mallikarjun Kharge mentioned Katchathivu island was given to Sri Lanka as a part of a “pleasant settlement” in 1974, and reminded Modi that his authorities too had made an analogous “pleasant gesture” in the direction of Bangladesh, pertaining to frame enclaves.
Kharge identified that the Modi authorities’s Lawyer Normal, Mukul Rohtagi, had informed the Supreme Court docket in 2014, that Katchathivu went to Sri Lanka by an settlement in 1974 and requested the way it may very well be taken again. “If you would like Katchathivu again, you’ll have to go to struggle to get it again,” Rohatgi mentioned.
Kharge went on to ask Modi: “Did your authorities take any steps to resolve this challenge and take again Katchathivu?”
Supreme Court docket Approached
Removed from being quiet on the problem, each the AIADMK and the DMK had gone to the Indian Supreme Court docket in a bid to get a ruling that the 1974 settlement which acknowledged Sri Lanka’s sovereignty over Katchathivu was “unconstitutional” because it had redrawn the Indian boundary with out a constitutional modification.
The AIADMK chief J. Jayalalithaa was the primary to lift the problem within the early Nineteen Nineties. And in 2003, she filed a case within the Supreme Court docket. The DMK did the identical in 2018. However the Central authorities’s argument within the courtroom was that Katchathivu was a “disputed territory” and due to this fact recognizing Sri Lanka’s sovereignty over it in 1974 was not unconstitutional.
Fishing Rights
Nevertheless, the dispute between Tamil Nadu on the one hand and the Central and Sri Lankan governments on the opposite, was over the interpretation of the 1974 and 1976 agreements over fishing rights.
Article 6 of the 1974 settlement mentioned that the vessels of Sri Lanka and India will get pleasure from in one another’s waters such rights as they’ve historically loved therein. Tamil Nadu politicians have argued that “conventional rights” meant fishing rights too. However Sri Lanka had disagreed.
After the signing of the 1976 settlement, there was an trade of letters between Kewal Singh, India’s International Secretary, and W.T. Jayasinghe, Sri Lanka’s Defence and International secretary. The letter mentioned: “The fishing vessels and fishermen of India shall not interact in fishing within the historic waters, the territorial sea and the unique financial zone of Sri Lanka nor shall the fishing vessels and fishermen of Sri Lanka interact in fishing within the historic waters,
territorial sea and the unique financial zone of India, with out the specific permission of Sri Lanka or India, because the case could also be.”
Election Ploy
Come elections, political events do rake up emotive points to achieve a decisive benefit over their rivals. Seen on this mild, Modi’s cost was solely an election ploy. He didn’t say that his authorities would retrieve Katchathivu from Sri Lanka. He solely blamed the Congress for giving it away again in 1974. There was no trace of renegotiating the 1974 Indo-Lanka maritime border pact. Nor was there a touch of it in Jaishankar’s assertions.
Nevertheless, as long as the Katchathivu challenge is restricted to Tamil Nadu politicians for whom the fishermen are a key vote financial institution, their utterances on the problem is not going to make a distinction to Indo-Lanka relations, which at the moment are wonderful. However whether it is raised by the ruling get together within the Centre ceaselessly, it might ruffle feathers in Colombo.
Already Modi has spoken about it twice. In August 2023, he mentioned in parliament: “Katchathivu is an island between Tamil Nadu and Sri Lanka. Any person gave it to a different nation. It occurred beneath the management of Indira Gandhi. Wasn’t that part of Maa Bharati (Mom India)?”
In April 2024, he made a extra detailed and frontal assault on the Congress on the identical challenge from a public platform and over X, aimed toward a bigger viewers.
On Wednesday, Sri Lanka’s International Minister Ali Sabry, PC, mentioned in a TV interview that Colombo doesn’t see a have to reopen talks with India over Katchathivu. “This can be a downside mentioned and resolved 50 years in the past and there’s no necessity to have additional discussions on this. I don’t suppose it’ll come up,” he mentioned.
In Sri Lanka, politicians throughout the ethnic divide are united on this challenge, with each Sinhalese and Tamil politicians saying that the island belongs to Sri Lanka and any negotiations on the contrary are out of the query.
END
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