The Congress and the DMK should apologise to the fishermen and to the public for ceding Katchatheevu to Sri Lanka, BJP State president K. Annamalai said in Coimbatore on Monday.
The Congress and the DMK should stop their campaign for the Lok Sabha election and instead take up a campaign to apologise to the people for ceding Katchatheevu illegally, he said.
Sharing details on the Katchatheevu agreement, obtained through an RTI query, he said that it was not a legitimate deal. The then Prime Minister, Indira Gandhi, should have discussed the issue in Parliament as it involved changing the boundary of the country. However, Parliament was merely informed about it. She overruled all the file notes, he alleged.
While addressing fishermen in Ramanathapuram about a month before the election was announced, Chief Minister M.K. Stalin spoke harshly about Prime Minister Narendra Modi. To ascertain the truth, Mr. Annamalai said, he had applied for the documents under the RTI Act. The Ministry of External Affairs then decided to “declassify” the documents, he said.
For more than 45 years, the DMK was saying that only the Congress was to be blamed. The DMK clearly had a role. Yet, the Chief Minister wrote to the Union government 21 times demanding that Katchatheevu be retrieved. Had the then Chief Minister, Karunanidhi, not agreed to the proposal, the Centre would not have ceded Katchatheevu, he claimed. The DMK should take moral responsibility for all the problems in the deep sea, he said.
The Union government was exploring all options for a permanent solution to the issue, mainly to help Tamil Nadu fishermen. The State government was duty-bound to provide support, he said. “They created the problem. Prime Minister Narendra Modi is trying to find a solution. The DMK is brazenly lying about Katchatheevu,” Mr. Annamalai said.
Article 6, which permitted Indian fishermen to use Katchatheevu, should be restored. Historically and strategically, Katchatheevu should be within India’s ambit, he said.
When asked about an RTI reply in 2015 regarding Katchatheevu, in which it was stated that no land was ceded, he said that the classified document had become public only now.
Whenever the Congress and the DMK were in power, they ceded a portion of India’s territory to another country, he alleged.
