Jayalalithaa urges Modi to retrieve Katchatheevu from Sri Lanka

The meeting between the two leaders assumed significance considering AIADMK’s support to the Modi government on the controversial Land Acquisition Bill in Lok Sabha even though Jayalalithaa had flagged certain reservations.

Tamil Nadu CM reiterates call to retrieve Katchatheevu from Sri Lanka Friday, August 7, 2015, 05:47 pm SL Time, ColomboPage News Desk, Sri Lanka.

The chief minister sought the deployment of central security forces at the Mulla Periyar dam in Kerala, which is maintained and used by Tamil Nadu.

She wanted Modi to form a Cauvery Management Board and the Cauvery Water Regualtion Committee and prevent Karnataka from building dams across the river. She recalled having suggested a “radical approach” where levy, collection and appropriation of the substitutes for VAT, Central Excise Duty and Service Tax within a state could be delegated completely to the state machinery, with the central machinery focusing on inter-state taxation.

Describing Tamil Nadu as a manufacturing state, she said that it stood lose huge revenue if the GST were to be implemented from April 2016, due to the shift of levy from the point of origin to the point of destination. Jaya also voiced her opposition to the setting up of GST Council as it impinges on the legislative sovereignty of Parliament and state legislatures.

Tamil Nadu is going to polls in 2016 and BJP is hoping to spread its wings in that state, possibly in alliance with AIADMK, sources said.

A few days after the killings, the Tamil Nadu government released a sum of Rs 3 lakh to each of the bereaved families. Jayalalithaa demanded that petroleum and petroleum products be kept out of GST purview.

In her memorandum, Jayalalithaa said that Katchatheevu was an island of 285 acres off Rameswaram in the narrow Palk Strait that divides Tamil Nadu and Sri Lanka and was once a part of Ramanathapuram district.

“I strongly urge the (Indian) government to take all possible steps to ensure that the process of democratic decentralization, which is integral to the survival of the Tamils in Sri Lanka, is expedited”, she said.

Jayalalithaa urged the Centre “to take necessary measures to bring to book those in Sri Lanka who had perpetrated the genocide on innocent Tamils in Sri Lanka”.

Union minister Pon Radhakrishan said, “No political meaning should be read into today’s visit, which was exclusively dedicated to the handlooms and weavers issue”.

-ifreepress