Kachchatheevu Issue Sri Lankan Minister Says ‘ Not Unusual To Hear similar Noises During Election Time ’ As the issue concerning Kachchatheevu heats up in India, the Sri Lankan Fisheries Minister Douglas Devananda has said it’s “ not unusual ” to hear similar claims and causes about the 285- acre islet during the election season. In 1974, India, under the Congress government, ceded the islet to Sri Lanka, followed by the pact on fishers’s rights in 1976. The contestation girding the transfer and the defined rights has boosted ahead of a general election in India.
External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar has raised enterprises about how Sri Lanka has detained further than 6,000 Indian fishers and 1,175 fishing vessels over the last 20 times. “ It’s the election time in India, it isn’t unusual to hear similar noises of claims and causes about Kachchatheevu, ” Devananda told journalists in Jaffna on Thursday. “ I suppose India is acting on its interests to secure this place to insure Sri Lankan fishers would not have any access to that area and that Sri Lanka shouldn’t claim any rights in that resourceful area, ” Devananda said. The statements on “ reclaiming ” Kachchatheevu. This comment came two days after Sri Lanka’s Foreign Minister Ali Sabry said the issue was settled 50 times agoneand there was no need to readdress it. “ There’s no contestation. They’re having an internal political debate about who’s responsible.
Other than that, no bone is talking about claiming Katchatheevu, ” he told the domestic Hiru TV channel on Wednesday. “ I do n’t suppose it’ll come up, ” he said, adding that no bone had yet raised the question of a change in the status of the islet, located 33 km off India’s seacoast in the Palk Strait that divides theneighbours.
Back- to- reverse statements from Sri Lankan politicians came days after the Narendra Modi government targeted the Congress Party and its supporter the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam( DMK) in Tamil Nadu criminating them of overlooking public interests in the ceding of Katchatheevu islet to Sri Lanka in 1974. The BJP has also been targeting the two parties for not icing the rights of the fishers wanting to grope in waters around the Katchatheevu islet.