A growing dispute over Katchatheevu claims that previous PMs just didn’t give a damn

External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar, citing Parliamentary records, stated that former Prime Minister Jahawarlal Nehru “simply did not care” about ceding the island, which he considered a “nuisance” and to which he “attached no importance.” On Monday, the ruling BJP escalated its offensive on the Katchatheevu issue.

In June 1974, an International Maritime Boundary Agreement between the two countries resulted in Katchatheevu being taken away to Sri Lanka. However, as Jaishankar said, a later 1976 agreement “took away the safeguards assured to the Indian fishermen in 1974.” Jaishankar shared MEA records of June 19, 1974, which reveal a conversation on the issue between then Foreign Secretary and Tamil Nadu Chief Minister K Karunanidhi. Karunanidhi is quoted as accepting PM Indira Gandhi’s suggested solution on the issue. Jaishankar noted that this abdication of claim “could not have happened without the connivance of the Congress-led Union government and the DMK-led Tamil Nadu government at the time.”. “The person who is always inquiring as to how the island was handed away was kept fully informed about the relocation…Jaishankar questioned the involvement of former Prime Ministers Jawaharlal Nehru and Indira Gandhi, as well as Karunanidhi, the father of current Chief Minister MK Stalin, in the issue, saying, “Those who connived (read Congress and DMK) to give away Katchatheevu are now politically posturing as if they are champions of the cause of fishermen and have nothing to do with the issue.”

“I attach no importance at all to this little island and I have no hesitation in giving up my claim on it,” Nehru said of Katchatheevu in May 1961, a comment Jaishankar highlighted from the MEA’s RTI answers to Tamil Nadu BJP chairman K Annamalai. Such issues should not be kept open and brought up again in Parliament, in my opinion. This island was small to Pt Nehru. It didn’t matter. He considered it an annoyance, he said.