CHENNAI: The emotive issue of Katchatheevu, an island ceded to Sri Lanka by the Congress government at the Centre in 1974, had always been a key point of discord between late Chief Ministers M Karunanidhi and J Jayalalithaa and the issue has occupied centre stage yet again, ahead of Lok Sabha polls.The Katchatheevu retrieval issue had all along been a subject of intense debate between the Dravidian majors with the unceasing arrest and harassment of Tamil fishermen.Jayalalithaa once vowed to retrieve the island to end the travails of fishermen and her party had always blamed the DMK for doing nothing to stop it, though it held the reins of power in 1974.Karunanidhi had asserted he never accepted the ceding nor did he agree to it. He had expressed his opposition as the Chief Minister. The DMK has always pointed out that it had held state-wide protests to oppose the ceding of Katchatheevu. In effect, both the ruling DMK and AIADMK have favoured reclaiming Katchatheevu.It was Indira Gandhi’s regime at the Centre that concluded pacts in 1974 and 1976, giving away the island to Sri Lanka. In the 1971 election, the DMK allied with the Gandhi-led Congress.Jayalalithaa had even moved the Supreme Court in 2008 for the island’s retrieval in her personal capacity. Later, the state government, headed by the AIADMK had impleaded itself in the case.She accused Karunanidhi of doing “nothing” to prevent the ceding. She even likened DMK to ‘Rip Van Winkle,’ an easygoing character from an English short story who goes on a slumber for 20 years, for ‘sleeping’ over the issue and then raising it in the Assembly.The DMK, however, sought to know from her what she had been doing since 1991, when she promised to retrieve it.The late AIADMK leader had once clarified in the Assembly that she only said that she would take steps to retrieve the island by working with the Centre and she did not “foolishly say that she will mobilise troops from here” to achieve her goal.In June 2016, Jayalalithaa met PM Modi and sought the retrieval of Katchatheevu and to resolve the long-standing dispute between the fishermen of Tamil Nadu and Sri Lanka.
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