All posts tagged: Katchatheevu controversy

Daily Briefing: Army probes into killing of three civilians, SBI’s ‘commissions’ for electoral bonds, NCERT’s textbook revision; and more | Live News

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📬 Get this delivered straight to your inbox: https://indianexpress.com/newsletters/ Read this newsletter in a single page: Good morning! 🚨 Big Story The Army’s internal inquiries into the killing of three civilians, allegedly during interrogation by its personnel following a terror attack in J&K’s Poonch in December 2023 that left four soldiers dead, and into the operational gaps have found serious lapses in the conduct of 7-8 personnel. We delve into the findings of the inquiries. More than three months after they were picked up and tortured, nine of the 10 villagers who survived are yet to return to work, many still nursing their wounds. Here are their accounts. ⚡ Only in Express While demands for “commission” owed to the bank constituted a bulk of the correspondence between SBI and the Ministry of Finance on the electoral bonds scheme, the bank also sent alerts on “erroneous printing” of bonds and expected increase in sales ahead of elections. Here’s what the hundreds of pages of correspondence and emails — obtained by The Indian Express via a RTI …

Katchatheevu controversy: Why international agreements are best left alone in domestic politics | Explained News

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After Prime Minister Narendra Modi amplified an RTI reply on Katchatheevu obtained by Tamil Nadu BJP leader K Annamalai by accusing Indira Gandhi’s government of “callously giving away” the island to Sri Lanka, External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar reiterated the talking points in the issue — but did not go further. Asked whether the Indian government intended to “reopen” the 1974 bilateral pact on Katchatheevu, the diplomat-turned politician said the issue was “sub judice” — referring to a petition filed in the Supreme Court by former Tamil Nadu Chief Minister J Jayalalithaa. While the controversy is being viewed as a political brownie-point-scoring exercise by the BJP against the DMK and Congress in Tamil Nadu, it has sparked disquiet in the strategic community both in New Delhi and Colombo — especially since it has the imprimatur of the Prime Minister himself. Katchatheevu map. Basis of international pacts When two governments negotiate an agreement, they work with information and understanding of the issue available at the time. In making the best possible decision, governments also take into …

Katchatheevu controversy: Sound and fury signifying nothing

Published by Parlour News

Katchatheevu is a 285-acre uninhabited Indian Ocean territory. The island is known for Antony’s Church which Lankan and Indian pilgrims visit annually. It was built in 1905 by Ramnad merchant Seenikuppan Padayachi, intended as a halfway ground for Indo-Lankan fishers for drying nets or asylums during tempests. The island was ceded by the Indira Gandhi government to the Sirimavo Bandaranaike Lankan administration in 1974. The notion of Katchatheevu’s so-called “callous” handover is full of sound and fury signifying nothing, except the egregious inattention to the historical and geostrategic contexts surrounding it. Katchatheevu is an unofficial battlefield between Indian Tamil fishers and a Sinhala-dominated Lankan navy. This is owing to complex factors like excessive trawling in the Sethusamudram region, contested legacies of the Lankan civil war, and the bilateral irresolution of the Tamil question. At least three important factors are ignored when public imagination scapegoats the transactors of the Indo-Lankan agreements of 1974 and ’76 that were meant to secure the division of the maritime boundaries in the Palk Bay and Gulf of Mannar. First, the …