Act tough on Lankan navy, Jayalalithaa writes to PM

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Tamil Nadu Chief minister J. Jayalalithaa has once again written to the Prime Minister demanding “tough words and action” by Delhi to stop the Navy and civilian miscreants of Sri Lanka from attacking TN fishermen “eking out their livelihood in their traditional areas of fishing in the Palk Bay”.

The ‘irony’ is that even after her last letter to him on October 10, there had been at least six major incidents in which TN fishermen have been attacked, Jayalalithaa said in her letter on Monday, wherein she reiterated that India must view these attacks “as a national issue and not as an isolated problem of Tamil Nadu alone”.

She told the Prime Minister that there appeared to be “a definite pattern of attacks by the Sri Lankan Navy/miscreants to create a fear psychosis amongst the innocent Tamil Nadu fishermen with a view to force them to desist from eking out their livelihood in their traditional areas of fishing in the Palk Bay area”.

Also, there was now a “deep feeling of unrest and concern among the fishermen community in particular and the entire state in general due to such incidents that have not stopped despite our repeated appeals to the Government of India and the diplomatic efforts of the Government of India”.

Listing out some of the recent attacks on the TN fishermen, Ms Jayalalithaa recalled to the PM her October 10 letter wherein she had conveyed her deep anguish that there had been many such incidents since her government took charge in May . Also, she had even brought this to the notice of Indian foreign secretary Ranjan Mathai when he met her on October 8, on his way to Colombo.

In his letter of November 3, the Prime Minister informed her that he had conveyed deep concern over the attacks on TN fishermen to the Sri Lankan President during their (UN) meeting at New York in September and the latter had ‘promised to seriously investigate these incidents’.

But Delhi’s efforts and that of her government “have only fallen on deaf ears” as there had been 22 such incidents at sea since May, Ms Jayalalithaa told the PM in her letter, copies of which were released to the media here.