The Sri lankan establishment is upset over reports that Ajit Doval, India’s National Security Advisor (NSA) is meeting Maithripala Sirisena, the Opposition candidate for the Presidential election scheduled for January 8, next year and a delegation of the secessionist Tamil National Alliance (TNA) during his visit to Colombo on Monday.
The NSA is visiting Colombo to deliver the keynote address at the élite “Galle Dialogue 2014” an international conference on maritime security to be held at the picturesque Galle near Colombo. The visit of Doval has been a topic of interest both to the Sri lankan establishment as well as to the intelligentsia.
A presidential aid told The Pioneer from Colombo over phone that the proposed meeting between the Indian NSA and the opposition candidate Sirisena was a matter of concern. “Sirisena defected from the ruling front and crossed over to the Opposition just a fortnight ago. His action is seen as a stabbing from behind as well as the fall out of an international conspiracy against President Rajapaksa,” said the Presidential source who requested not to publish his name.
“This is a matter which could upset the relations between India and Sri lanka,” said Sinha Ratnatunga, a prominent intellectual who is also the editor of The Sunday Times published from Colombo. Ratnatunga has no love lost for President Rajapaksa as he was the one who questioned the action of the latter attending a private dinner hosted by a former Indian High Commissioner. “We can understand the logic behind the NSA or any Indian dignitary calling on leader of the Opposition in Sri lanka. But the NSA’s meeting with Sirisena and the TNA delegation has created a bad impression in Sri lanka,” Ratnatunga told The Pioneer.
He said there is nothing wrong in the NSA meeting even a delegation of the Opposition.
“But the NSA’s meeting the opposition candidate and the TNA atb this juncture will send wrong signals to all sections of the society,” said Ratnatunga.
He also pointed out the positive vibes between India and Sri lanka like the unconditional release by the President of the five fishermen from Tamil Nadu who had been sentenced to death by the Colombo High Court on charges of trafficking 995 gram heroin to the island nation. The TNA is a secessionist organisation of former lTTE acolytes who has a separate Tamil Eelam in the island nation as their target. The umbrella organisation itself is being termed as a fraud because of non-inclusion of any Tamils from the south and cemtral parts of Sri lanka.
While congratulating Prime Minister Narendra Modi for effecting a paradigm change in India-Sri lanka ties, Dr Subramanian Swamy, senior BJP leader requested the former to instruct senior Indian officials visiting Sri lanka to keep the Sri lankan government in the loop of “any closed door meeting they have with the pro lTTE TNA politicians and rebel candidates in the forthcoming election’.
“These candidates will propagate that India is supporting them while Sinhala chauvinist groups will denounce India for the ‘double dealing’” said Dr Swamy. He also said that Prime Minister Modi’s greetings to President Rajapaksa during the SAARC summit at Kathmandu has washed away all the misgivings about India’s intentions adverse to their national integrity.
