KANNNIYAKUMARI : While the Katchatheevu dispute continues to remain a hot topic of discussion, former AIADMK minister and Kanniyakumari MLA N Thalavai Sundaram said on Wednesday that the AIADMK has been the only political party that took legal measures to retrieve the island from Sri Lanka.
Speaking to reporters in Nagercoil, Sundaram stated that the AIADMK party, led by its then general secretary J Jayalalithaa, had filed a petition in the Supreme Court in 2008 seeking to retrieve the Katchatheevu island, which was handed over to Sri Lanka by the Congress in the 1970s.
"After Jayalalithaa moved the Supreme Court, the Congress-led union government filed a counter affidavit in the apex court in 2011, stating that the island did not fall under the country's realm of sovereignty anymore. During the period, DMK was an alliance partner of the UPA government," he said.
Saying that he was the AIADMK's law wing secretary at the time, Sundaram said, as the case was pending in the top court, Jayalalithaa and Edappadi K Palaniswami, current party general secretary, wrote to then union government to expedite the proceedings of the case. However, neither the Congress nor the later BJP government took any efforts in this regard, he said.
He further noted that the AIADMK remains the only political party which has adopted legal measures to retrieve the Katchatheevu island. Meanwhile, a video clip of Jayalalithaa's speech in the Assembly, about the party's efforts to reclaim the island, was also shown ahead of the press meet.
