External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar being welcomed by Governor of Eastern Province of Sri Lanka, Senthil Thondaman, upon his arrival in Colombo, Sri Lanka, Thursday, June 20, 2024.
| Photo Credit: PTI

External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar arrived in Sri Lanka on Thursday, June 20, 2024, his first visit here in his second consecutive term in office, during which he will hold talks with the country’s leadership to bolster bilateral ties.

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Mr. Jaishankar was received by Tharaka Balasuriya, State Minister of Foreign Affairs, and Senthil Thondaman, Governor of the Eastern Province, on his arrival in Colombo.

“Landed in Colombo for my first visit in the new term. Thank Minister of State @TharakaBalasur1 and Governor of Eastern province @S_Thondaman for the warm welcome. Look forward to my meetings with the leadership,” Mr. Jaishankar posted on X.

Sri Lanka is central to India’s Neighbourhood First and SAGAR policies, he wrote.

Mr. Jaishankar and Sri Lankan President Ranil Wickremesinghe jointly unveiled the virtual plaque to mark the formal commissioning of the Maritime Rescue Coordination Centre (MRCC) in Sri Lanka under a $6 million grant from India, according to the Presidential Media Division Colombo.

This includes a centre at Navy headquarters in Colombo, a sub-centre in Hambantota and unmanned installations at Galle, Arugambay, Batticaloa, Trincomalee, Kallarawa, Point Pedro and Mollikulam, said the statement.

Mr. WickremesingheDr. Jaishankar jointly unveiled the virtual plaque for 106 houses in Kandy, Nuwara Eliya and Matale under the Indian Housing Project with 24 houses in each model village in Colombo and Trincomalee being handed over virtually.

Neighbourhood-first policy

Under its ‘Neighbourhood First’ policy, India is committed to developing friendly and mutually beneficial relations with all its neighbours.

SAGAR or Security and Growth for All in the Region is India’s vision and geopolitical framework of maritime cooperation in the Indian Ocean region.

The trip to Sri Lanka will be Mr. Jaishankar’s standalone bilateral visit after he assumed charge as the External Affairs Minister for the second term on June 11.

Mr. Jaishankar was last week part of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s delegation at the G7 Outreach summit in Italy’s Apulia region.

The Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) in New Delhi said the External Affairs Minister will have meetings with the Sri Lankan leadership on wide-ranging issues.

“This will be the External Affairs Minister’s first bilateral visit after the formation of the new government under Prime Minister Narendra Modi,” it said.

“Reaffirming India’s Neighbourhood First Policy, the visit underlines India’s continued commitment to Sri Lanka as its closest maritime neighbour and time-tested friend,” the MEA said in a statement.

“The visit will add momentum to connectivity projects and other mutually beneficial cooperation across sectors,” it said.

Sri Lankan President Ranil Wickremesinghe was among seven top leaders from India’s neighbourhood and the Indian Ocean region who attended the swearing-in ceremony of Prime Minister Modi and the Union Council of Ministers at the Rashtrapati Bhavan on June 9.

(With inputs from PTI)

Arguably India’s most popular project in Sri Lanka, the ambulance network has attended to about 82 lakh calls and 19 lakh medical emergencies till date, including in remote areas
| Photo Credit: File Photo

An India-gifted free ambulance service in Sri Lanka, providing vital pre-hospital emergency care across the island for eight years, appears to be in need of critical support, going by a recent social media post by a public health professional.

Yasuni Manikkage, a doctor working at a Colombo-based government hospital, on Tuesday took to ‘X’ to flag a 51-year-old man’s sudden death at his residence in Colombo. “Desperately called Suwaseriya, but they did not have any available ambulances nearby. We could not save him on time. Why is funding Suwaseriya 1990 & saving lives not a priority for Lankan government?” she asked in the post that has since drawn much attention.

The delay in response time — the nearest ambulance was 30 minutes away — is uncharacteristic of the ‘Suwaseriya 1990’ service. From the time it was launched in July 2016, with a $7.56-million Indian grant, and expanded in two years with an additional $15.09 million from India, it has made a mark with its promptness and efficiency. Arguably New Delhi’s most popular project in Sri Lanka, the ambulance network has attended to about 82 lakh calls and 19 lakh medical emergencies till date, including in remote areas.

After the initial Indian grant assistance to set up the service Sri Lanka took over and has since been running it with a team of professionals working in coordination with the Ministry of Health. Over 700 of the medical technicians were trained in India initially, but following the pandemic years Sri Lanka developed its own training programme at the University of Kelaniya.

Despite the service’s reach and wide acclaim — a World Bank report called it one of the world’s most digitally advanced and free ambulance services — sustaining it is proving a challenge after Sri Lanka’s crushing financial meltdown in 2022, according to Dumindra Ratnayaka, Chairman of the Suwaseriya Foundation.

The island nation’s unprecedented economic crisis brought with it hyperinflation and a drastic rise in living costs, pushing many Sri Lankans, including thousands of medical professionals and technicians, to seek opportunities abroad. Consequently, Sri Lanka’s public health system, and the ambulance service that is part of it, are impacted. “Of our nearly 1,500 staff, we have lost 400 since 2022,” Mr. Ratnayaka said, speaking of the difficulty in finding technicians and putting them through training before they can come on board.  Staff salaries are currently in the range of LKR 50,000 (roughly ₹ 13,800), with which an individual, let alone a family, can hardly make ends meet in Sri Lanka.

The government cannot increase salaries for just one section of public service, and it cannot afford salary hikes across the board at the moment, Sri Lanka’s Health Minister Ramesh Pathirana said. “We have made the necessary budgetary allocation for the ambulance service. The country is stabilising, and things are improving in the health sector too,” he told The Hindu on Wednesday.

Despite the budgetary allocation, an apparent funding crunch prompted the ambulance service to seek adoption last year. Through private sector donations and corporate assistance, it has raised LKR 750 million since, but sustaining the service may need more than individual philanthropy, public health experts noted.

Of the ambulance service’s fleet of 322 vehicles, over 50 are currently offline owing to either staff shortages, or a delay in repairs.  “Dimo, who are Tata’s agent here, have also lost many mechanics, they have migrated. That means the time taken to repair a vehicle has increased considerably,” Mr. Ratnayaka said, pointing to how the country’s enduring crisis manifests in many ways.

‘Suwaseriya’ is the “last thing” that should be underfunded, contended Colombo-based writer Andrew Fidel Fernando. He recalled how after an unexpected patellar dislocation last year, a call to 1990 brought swift and expert medical care to the spot. “It took barely 5 minutes for the ambulance to reach the park I was at, playing with my kids. The staff were very receptive, incredibly professional, and efficient. There aren’t too many things in Sri Lanka’s public service that I would call world class, but this ambulance service certainly is!” he said.

Indian and Sri Lankan pilgrims leave Katchatheevu in March 2023 after attending the St. Anthony’s Church festival.
| Photo Credit: The Hindu

The story so far: On March 31, Prime Minister Narendra Modi posted on social media platform ‘X’ that he blamed the Congress for “callously” giving away Katchatheevu island to Sri Lanka. He cited a media report on documents received in response to a Right to Information Act application from K. Annamalai, the Bharatiya Janata Party’s (BJP) Tamil Nadu president. Soon after, External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar held a media conference, in which he sought to elaborate on Mr. Modi’s allegation. Calling for a “solution”, he said the bilateral agreements signed by India and Sri Lanka in 1974 and 1976, when the Congress and the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK) were in power respectively at the Centre and in Tamil Nadu, displayed indifference about Katchatheevu island, and compromised Indian fishermen’s rights in the Palk Strait separating India and Sri Lanka.

Where is Katchatheevu?

Katchatheevu is an uninhabited island spanning some 285 acres in the Palk Strait that separates Tamil Nadu and northern Sri Lanka. More precisely, it is located 14.5 km south of Delft Island and about 16 km to the northeast of Rameswaram. It is barren, has no drinking water or infrastructure, except a sole Catholic structure dedicated to St. Anthony.

What was the dispute?

The dispute was over who owns Katchatheevu. Negotiations began in 1921, between the British colonial governments of Madras and Ceylon, with both sides claiming territorial ownership. The matter was settled some five decades later, after the Governments of India and Sri Lanka, under Prime Ministers Indira Gandhi and Sirimavo Bandaranaike, signed two bilateral agreements in 1974 and 1976. The governments agreed that Katchatheevu falls within Sri Lanka’s territory, and on a maritime boundary in the Gulf of Mannar and Bay of Bengal to define the two countries’ exclusive economic zones. With the exclusive economic zones, India and Sri Lanka agreed to exercise sovereign rights over the living and non-living resources of their respective zone. The understanding was that fishing vessels and fishermen of India and Sri Lanka shall not fish in each other’s waters, territorial sea and the exclusive zone.

However, despite the historic dispute over its territorial definition, fishermen from Tamil Nadu visit Katchatheevu every March, along with their Tamil-speaking counterparts of northern Sri Lanka, for the annual St. Anthony’s festival. The Indian fishermen do not require a passport to visit the island in Sri Lankan territorial waters for this purpose, because the 1974 agreement expressly permitted them to access the island for rest, drying of nets, and the festival, while prohibiting any fishing activity.

What did India get?

Commentary and analysis from the time, including in The Hindu, shows New Delhi was seen as gaining some diplomatic mileage with its neighbour, which was tilting towards China then. A few years after the liberation of Bangladesh, and alongside the difficult question of citizenship for Indian-origin Tamils who were rendered stateless in Sri Lanka, New Delhi deemed strong and close ties with Sri Lanka important. Further, New Delhi got sovereign rights over Wadge Bank, located near Kanniyakumari, and its rich marine resources. Earlier this year, the Union Ministry of Petroleum and Natural Gas, Directorate of Hydro-Carbon put out Notice Inviting Offers (NIO) for the exploration and development of oil and gas blocks in India, under the Hydrocarbon Exploration and Licensing Policy (HELP). The move drew flak from residents of Kanniyakumari and environmentalists who raised concerns over such activity impacting the marine ecosystem around Wadge Bank.

Are fishermen arrests related to the island?

No, they are not. Indian fishermen from Tamil Nadu have been facing arrests by the Sri Lankan Navy for many years now, for fishing illegally in Sri Lanka’s territorial waters. Invariably, the arrests are made well past Katchatheevu, very close to Sri Lanka’s northern shores. Northern Sri Lankan fishermen, also Tamil speaking, have been agitating since the end of the island nation’s civil war in 2009, to assert their fishing rights. The Indian fishing boats are a major impediment to their post-war recovery.

In particular, they resist the use of the bottom-trawling fishing method used by their Indian counterparts, where trawl nets go down to the seabed, and scoop out all marine organisms, including small fishes and eggs. Eager to boost its marine exports, India began encouraging mechanised trawler fishing decades ago, when the Norwegian government invested millions of dollars into modernising India’s fishing fleet from the 1950s and up to the early 1970s. Owing to the practice, marine resources along Tamil Nadu’s coast have depleted, pushing Indian fishermen towards the Sri Lankan coast, rich in marine biodiversity, especially shrimps. Northern Sri Lankan fishermen are opposing the use of the fishing method that Indian fishermen stubbornly hold on to, despite the two governments in 2016 agreeing to expedite the “transition towards ending the practice of bottom trawling at the earliest”. The fishermen’s conflict is a contest between Tamil-speaking fishermen in India and Sri Lanka, with those from Tamil Nadu habitually fishing illegally in Sri Lankan waters, using bottom trawlers that are banned in Sri Lanka. Although many politicians in India often conflate the two issues, Katchatheevu is not the site of this struggle, and its “retrieval” cannot be a solution to it.

What has been the response?

Opposition parties led by the Congress have slammed the remarks, citing the government’s own position in 2015 that the previous agreements did not “involve either acquiring or ceding of territory belonging to India”. Tamil Nadu Chief Minister M.K. Stalin asked if PM Modi raised the issue of the retrieval of the Katchatheevu island with Sri Lanka once during his 10-year rule. Senior diplomats, who have led Indian missions in Sri Lanka, said questioning past agreements could damage India’s credibility and impair relations with our neighbour. Former National Security Adviser Shiv Shankar Menon told The Hindu that reopening the 50-year-old-agreement could prove to be a “self-goal.”

Editorial | No man’s land: Playing politics over Katchatheevu 

In what some see as a muted response from the Sri Lankan government, the country’s Foreign Minister Ali Sabry has said there is no need to resume talks on a matter resolved 50 years ago. Sri Lanka’s Fisheries Minister Douglas Devananda has accused India of acting in self-interest “to ensure Sri Lankan fishermen do not have access” around Katchatheevu. Fishermen on both sides have voiced concern over the remarks, while reminding the two governments that much needs to be done to resolve the actual fisheries conflict that is threatening both the region’s marine ecosystem and livelihoods of fisher folk who depend on it.

New Delhi:

A tiny island between India and Sri Lanka on Palk Straight has become the latest flashpoint between the Congress and the BJP ahead of the Lok Sabha elections.

The island of Katchatheevu, a disputed area, was given to Sri Lanka by the Congress government headed by late Prime Minister Indira Gandhi through an agreement in 1974.

Katchatheevu — around 33 km from the Indian coast near Rameswaram — has been a disputed territory between India and Sri Lanka since the British period. Back then both nations were British colonies. The British, citing the traditional claims of the Ramnad zamindari of Ramanathapuram, had attached it to the Madras Presidency.

But the dispute broke out again after Independence over fishing rights around the island.

To settle the discord and strengthen ties with Sri Lanka, the government headed by Indira Gandhi had agreed to cede it to island nation under the 1974 “Indo-Sri Lankan Maritime agreement”.

At the time, the uninhabited volcanic island — 1.6 km in length and around 300 m wide — was thought to have little strategic value. But over the last decades, the situation has changed owing to the rise of China and its growing influence over Sri Lanka.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi last evening asserted that the Congress “callously” gave it away to Sri Lanka. “Eye-opening and startling! New facts reveal how Congress callously gave away Katchatheevu. This has angered every Indian and reaffirmed in people’s minds – we can’t ever trust Congress,” PM Modi posted on X, formerly Twitter.

Doubling down on Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s charge at Opposition over the Katchatheevu island row, External Affairs Minister Dr S Jaishankar today said Jawaharlal Nehru, the country’s first Prime Minister, wanted to give away the island to Sri Lanka.

Responding to the remarks, senior DMK leader RS Bharathi said the Prime Minister has “no achievements” to showcase . “If PM Modi was keen on Katchatheevu, he could have reclaimed that island during his 10 years in office. Why did not he take up the Katchatheevu issue?” Mr Bharathi said.

The argument has been seconded by Congress chief Mallikarjun Kharge. The Katchatheevu island was given to Sri Lanka as part of a friendly agreement in 1974, Mr Kharge added, pointing out that the BJP-led government too had undertaken a similar “friendly gesture” towards Bangladesh on exchange of border enclaves.

Colombo:

External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar on Wednesday called on Sri Lankan President Ranil Wickremesinghe in Colombo and held “extensive discussions” aimed at enhancing the relationship between the two neighbours.

The minister, who is here to attend the 23rd Council of Ministers Meeting of the Indian Ocean Rim Association (IORA), met with President Wickremesinghe at the Presidential Secretariat.

“Called on President of Sri Lanka Ranil Wickremesinghe today evening in Colombo. Conveyed the warm greetings of PM @narendramodi. Discussed the progress in taking the India-Sri Lanka relationship forward across the many domains of our cooperation,” Mr Jaishankar said in a post on platform X.

During their meeting, they engaged in “extensive discussions aimed at enhancing the relationship” between India and Sri Lanka, the President’s office said.

Additionally, three new bilateral agreements were signed to foster greater cooperation between the two countries, it added.

The minister said India and Sri Lanka also launched a logo celebrating the 75 Years of “our diplomatic relationship today”.

Sharing the picture of the logo on X, he said, it “captures our deep historical, cultural and people to people bonds”.

India and Sri Lanka launched a logo celebrating the 75 Years of our diplomatic relationship today.

Captures our deep historical, cultural and people to people bonds. pic.twitter.com/a78c8Rfj8f

— Dr. S. Jaishankar (@DrSJaishankar) October 11, 2023

S Jaishankar arrived in Colombo on Monday evening to attend the IORA Council of Ministers meeting – the highest decision-making body of IORA, the largest and pre-eminent organisation in the Indian Ocean Region with 23 members and 10 dialogue partners.

At the meeting, India assumed the Vice Chair role of IORA for 2023-25 leading to chairing in 2025-27.

This was his second visit to Sri Lanka in 2023.

S Jaishankar last visited Colombo in January during which he held talks with Lanka’s top leadership and discussed the entire gamut of close bilateral partnership and steps to strengthen it in all spheres.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)