‘Can’t ever trust Congress’: PM Modi targets party for ‘ceding’ Katchatheevu to Sri Lanka

He also raised the matter later at his rally in Meerut, and linked the issue to the capture of Tamil Nadu fishermen and the seizure of their boats by the Sri Lankan forces.

Katchatheevu Island is a 285-acre territory within Sri Lanka’s maritime boundary, located 33 km off the coast of Tamil Nadu.

The report cited by the PM claimed that the documents Annamalai received through his RTI application revealed India’s fluctuating stance on the island’s sovereignty, ultimately leading to it being ceded to Sri Lanka in 1974, when Indira Gandhi was PM.

Responding to Modi’s statement, Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge said, “Under your (Modi’s) government, in a friendly gesture, 111 enclaves from India were transferred to Bangladesh, and 55 enclaves came to India. In 1974, a similar agreement, based on friendly gesture, was initiated with another country – Sri Lanka on Katchatheevu.”

“On the eve of elections in Tamil Nadu, you are raising this sensitive issue, but your own government’s Attorney General, Shri Mukul Rohtagi, in 2014 told the following to the Supreme Court: ‘Katchatheevu went to Sri Lanka by an agreement in 1974. How can it be taken back today? If you want Katchatheevu back, you will have to go to war to get it back,’” Kharge said.

He also asked whether the Modi government was taking any steps to “resolve this issue and take back Katchatheevu”.

Union Home Minister Amit Shah also took to social media to criticise the Congress over the issue. “Slow claps for Congress! They willingly gave up Katchatheevu and had no regrets about it either. Sometimes an MP of the Congress speaks about dividing the nation and sometimes they denigrate Indian culture and traditions. They only want to divide or break our nation,” he said in a post on X.

BJP spokesperson Sudhanshu Trivedi said Tamil Nadu fishermen used to go to the island earlier, but the agreement India signed with Sri Lanka under the Indira Gandhi government barred them from doing so.

He also blamed the DMK and the Congress for not raising the issue.

Congress’s INDIA bloc ally DMK, in power in Tamil Nadu, said its position on the issue had been made clear multiple times by late party patriarch M Karunanidhi and party president and Tamil Nadu CM MK Stalin.

DMK organisation secretary R S Bharathi said the PM has “no achievements” to showcase and alleged that he was spreading “lies”. Bharathi said in 1974, the DMK held state-wide agitations and public meetings to oppose and condemn the ceding of Katchatheevu to Sri Lanka.

Katchatheevu has never been an issue that had any significant influence on the electorate in Tamil Nadu. However, the BJP’s move to bring up the issue comes amid the DMK government’s criticism of the ruling party at Centre over issues of federalism and states’ rights.

The island is home to the 110-year-old St Anthony’s Church, which attracts thousands of devotees annually from India, who go there from Rameswaram in Tamil Nadu.

Originating from a 14th-century volcanic eruption, Katchatheevu had been under the control of the kingdom of Ramnad Raja, who was based in Ramanathapuram (now a city in Tamil Nadu). The island later came under British rule, within the Madras Presidency. In 1921, under British rule, India and Sri Lanka raised claims over Katchatheevu to determine their fishing boundaries. A survey marked Katchatheevu within Sri Lankan boundaries, but a British delegation from India challenged this, citing the ownership of the island by the Ramnad Kingdom.

The dispute remained unsettled until the 1974 agreement between independent India and Sri Lanka ceded Katchatheevu to Sri Lanka, allowing Indian fishermen access for specific purposes, but not explicitly granting fishing rights. The agreement, signed in Colombo and New Delhi, did not involve consultation with the Tamil Nadu government, causing long-standing discontent.

Ever since 1974, Tamil Nadu has been consistently contesting the decision to cede the island, demanding traditional fishing rights and territorial claims over the island. The issue has led to legal disputes too, including a petition by the late AIADMK leader J Jayalalithaa in the Supreme Court, claiming the island’s ceding to Sri Lanka was unconstitutional.

In August 2014, then Attorney General Mukul Rohatgi told a Supreme Court Bench that there may be no way to retrieve the island.

(With PTI inputs)