COLOMBO: Sri Lanka doesn’t see any have to re-open talks on a contentious island ceded to it by New Delhi 50 years in the past, the overseas minister has mentioned, after the low-key territorial squabble was a hot-button election subject in India.
The occasion of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who is predicted to win normal elections that begin on Apr 19, has flagged the problem of Indian fishermen discontented after a 1976 pact between the neighbours barred them from the waters across the island.
“This is a problem discussed and resolved 50 years ago and there is no necessity to have further discussions on this,” Sri Lankan Foreign Minister Ali Sabry advised the home Hiru tv channel on Wednesday.
“I don’t think it will come up,” he mentioned, including that nobody had but raised the query of a change within the standing of the island, positioned 33km off India’s coast within the Palk Strait that divides the neighbours.
His feedback got here after Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party made the 285-acre island an election marketing campaign subject by accusing the opposition Congress occasion of getting “callously” given it away.
The BJP seeks to make election inroads within the coastal state of Tamil Nadu going through the island after failing to win any of the southern state’s 39 seats in India’s 545-member parliament within the final election.
Tamil Nadu goes to the polls on Apr 19 within the first of seven rounds of voting set to finish on Jun 1.
India ceded the island to Sri Lanka in 1974, adopted by the pact on the fishermen in 1976, however unhappiness over the switch and the abridged rights spurred two as but unresolved Supreme Court challenges within the final 20 years.
The fishermen of each international locations have sometimes violated the pact on the waters across the uninhabited island, referred to as Katchatheevu.
On Monday, Indian Foreign Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar mentioned Sri Lanka had detained greater than 6,000 Indian fishermen and 1,175 fishing vessels over the past 20 years, following the no-fishing pact.
https://www.channelnewsasia.com/asia/sri-lanka-sees-no-need-talks-india-island-it-ceded-decades-ago-4242396
