Chances of the Sri lankan Government releasing the impounded 76 fishing boats owned by Tamil Nadu fishermen for poaching from the territorial waters of the island nation brightened on Wednesday.
Subramanian Swamy, senior leader of the BJP called on Gotabaya Rajapaksa, Sri lankan Defence Secretary and handed over the list of all the fishing boats seized by the Sri lankan Navy since June 2014 for trespassing the International Maritime Boundary line (IMBl) and poaching fish from the shores of Sri lanka.
The list submitted by the BJP leader has the registration numbers and names of the owners of all the boats. “I am very positive about the result of this meeting. I was told by the Defence Secretary that all the boats would be released if the names of owners of the boats tally with the list in their possession. I am an optimist and confident of Sri lankan Government’s approach towards India,” Swamy told The Pioneer after meeting Gotabaya Rajapaksa, rated as the second most powerful person in Sri lanka after President Mahinda Rajapaksa.
“The Defence Secretary was sympathetic to our request and said he would do the needful,” said Swamy. President Rajapaksa had ordered the release of nearly 100 fishermen from Tamil Nadu in Sri lankan custody in May, hours before the swearing-in ceremony of Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
last week saw the president pardoning five fishermen from Tamil Nadu who had been sentenced to death by the Colombo High Court on charges of drug trafficking to Sri lanka. Swamy had asked President Rajapaksa and Prime Minister Narendra Modi to consider the issue of death sentence awarded to the fishermen sympathetically and drew their attention to a treaty signed by the two countries with respect to exchange of convicts who have been awarded capital punishment.
President Rajapaksa had told an Indian journalist in September last that there was no possibility of releasing the boats at that time. “No, not at the moment. The fishermen from Tamil Nadu have been destroying the environment using massive bottom trawlers.which are depleting all resources of fish and we cannot tolerate that,” the President had said.
But he had not totally ruled out the possibility of releasing the boat either. “We may be able to get the boats released if we could convince the Sri lankan Government that our fishermen would not resort to bottom trawling,” Swamy had told The Pioneer. The senior BJP leader who heads the strategic affairs committee of the party also discussed with Gotabaya Rajapaksa recent developments like growth of ISIS and Al Qaeda in the sub-continent and the visit of Chinese submarines to Colombo port.
later in the day, Swamy will deliver the first lalith Athulathmudali Memorial lecture on “Strengthening SAARC,” at the famous Bhandaranaike Centre for International Studies.