Jayalalithaa ups ante on Katchatheevu

Dares the DMK chief to come to the Assembly and respond to her charges

June 24, 2016 12:00 am | Updated October 18, 2016 03:14 pm IST

Taking on DMK president M. Karunanidhi, Chief Minister Jayalalithaa on Thursday asked him to come to the Assembly to answer her queries on his contradictory statements over the ceding of Katchatheevu island to Sri Lanka and not issue statements from outside.

Replying to the motion of thanks to the Governor’s address, Ms. Jayalalithaa took up the contentious issue again in the Assembly, a second time in three days.

According to her, in 1974, Mr. Karunanidhi had said he knew about the ceding of Katchatheevu by India only after the Central Government’s notification on June 28 that year. Later in 2013, addressing a meeting of the Tamil Eelam Supporters Organisation (TESO), he said only because of him the Centre had included a few clauses in the agreement.

“Are these statements not contradictory? Doesn’t agreeing to add clauses mean approval to cession?” Ms. Jayalalithaa asked. Many of the DMK MLAs objected to this and stood up to respond to her but the Speaker denied them permission.

“I am asking Mr. Karunanidhi. Let him answer. All of you sit down. I am not yielding,” Ms. Jayalalithaa insisted.

As the DMK MLAs continued to protest, the Chief Minister told the Speaker that the DMK chief was a member of the House and could have come to answer in person.

Instead, he was issuing statements (from outside), she noted adding that she would finish her reply in a few minutes after which the DMK members could be allowed to speak.

However, the DMK MLAs were unrelenting. The Speaker told them that the Chief Minister has been magnanimous to let them speak after she completes her speech. In protest, the DMK members walked out of the House.

‘They have no answer’

Continuing with her speech, Ms. Jayalalithaa said the DMK MLAs had patiently listened to her speech for one-and-a-half hours but ran away from the House as they have no answers to her questions on Katchatheevu. “I expected this. Whenever I raise the Katchatheevu issue, they start shouting. After realising that shouting can’t come to their rescue, they run away,” she charged, reiterating that Mr. Karunanidhi has all the rights to come to the Assembly and express his views. “My questions are directed to Mr. Karunanidhi. If the DMK MLAs have the guts, they can answer them. If they have no guts, they should have brought their leader here,” Ms. Jayalalithaa said.

“The DMK MLAs themselves are confused over their leader. Is it Mr. Karunanidhi ‘who is called the DMK president’ their leader or the Leader of the Opposition (M.K. Stalin) who is sitting here,” she asked to the thumping of desks by the ruling party MLAs.

Ms. Jayalalithaa went on to make her points fixing the blame on Mr. Karunanidhi for ceding of Katchatheevu. “With his (Karunanidhi) statement that he pacified the then Prime Minister Indira Gandhi and secured many rights (for fishermen), it was clear that he had accepted to the cession,” she alleged.

‘Done with an eye on poll’

Ms. Jayalalithaa asked when the then Jan Sangh leader Vajpayee informed that a case would be filed challenging the cession of the island, why did the State government not file a case then. While she filed a case in the Supreme Court in 2008 to retrieve Katchatheevu and the government impleaded itself in the case in 2011 following the resolution moved by her in the House, the DMK filed an affidavit only in 2013 keeping in mind the general elections in 2014, she charged.

“When Mr. Karunanidhi was Chief Minister, why did the government not reply to the Supreme Court notice that cession of Katchatheevu was wrong,” she asked. His statement that the Tamil Nadu fishermen got the rights to fish and dry nets in the island was false because there was no such clause in the 1974 agreement, she said. “Can Mr. Karunanidhi answer these questions,” the Chief Minister posed.

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