COLOMBO: India will not be pressing Sri Lanka to merge the northern and eastern provinces to form a single Tamil-majority, Tamil-speaking province as envisaged by the India-Sri Lanka Accord of 1987, Foreign Secretary S Jaishankar told the Tamil National Alliance (TNA) here on Monday.
He was reacting to a demand made by the leader of the Eelam Peoples’ Revolutionary Liberation Front (EPRLF) Suresh Premachandran that India should honour its promise to keep the North and East united. It had even said that it would not allow a referendum to be held on the issue.
When the united province was de-merged in 2006 by a Supreme Court order, India did not protest saying it was for the Sri Lankan government to appeal against the judgment. India had clearly lost interest in the issue. Its interests lay elsewhere in Sri Lanka.
Jaishankar told Premachandran that much water has flown down the bridge since 1987 and as the situation has changed it will be better for all concerned to make use of the opportunity, which have opened up recently with the change of regime in Colombo, and secure rights of Tamils.