Last Update: 19 July 2022, 23:44 IST
A protester waved the national flag outside the office of President Gotabaya Rajapaksa in Colombo, Sri Lanka on Wednesday. (image: AP)
Representing the DMK in the meeting, its senior leader TR Baalu made the remarks in the presence of External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar.
The DMK said at an all-party meeting here on Tuesday that India should pressure Sri Lanka to grant more autonomy to the island nation’s Tamil-dominated northern and eastern provinces while providing humanitarian aid to the neighboring country. Representing the DMK in the meeting, its senior leader TR Baalu made the remarks in the presence of External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar.
MDMK leader Vaiko had also made a similar demand in the meeting. Jaishankar on Tuesday briefed the leaders of all major political parties about the situation in Sri Lanka devastated by the economic turmoil and the assistance being provided by India.
“Granting humanitarian aid to Sri Lanka, the Government of India It should also make serious efforts to influence the Sri Lankan government to address the ethnic problem by implementing the 13th Amendment to its constitution – which calls for greater autonomy and devolution in the Tamil-majority northern and eastern provinces,” Balu told the meeting. The 13th Amendment mandates a measure of devolution of power to the provincial councils set up to govern the nine provinces of the island. This amendment came into force after the Indo-Lanka Agreement of July 1987, on which the then Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi and It was signed by the then Sri Lankan President J.R. Jayawardene, to resolve Sri Lanka’s ethnic conflict, which had turned into an all-out civil war.
This amendment led to the creation of provincial councils, assuring a power-sharing arrangement to enable all nine provinces of the country, including Sinhalese-majority regions, to self-govern.
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