Sri Lanka Tamil National Alliance MPs to meet Sushma, Modi this week

Leaders of Sri Lanka’s main Tamil party are to push their case for full implementation of the thirteenth amendment (which devolves powers to the provinces) to the Constitution during a meeting with Prime Minister Narendra Modi. The Tamil National Alliance (TNA) delegation leaves for India today for their first meeting with the new Indian government. The delegation is expected to meet External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj tomorrow and hopes to meet Modi on Saturday. [caption id=“attachment_1674873” align=“alignleft” width=“380”]  Associated Press[/caption] Senior TNA parliamentarian M A Sumanthiran said the party will urge India to ensure Sri Lanka fully implements the 13A amendment as the Sri Lankan government had earlier given that assurance to India. Under the 13A amendment, TNA seeks the powers of execution over the provincial police force and lands in the northern provincial council which they control after last year’s landslide win in the first ever provincial poll in the Tamil-dominated north. Colombo, however is averse to conferring both strands of powers to the council as it would be seen as the creation of a de facto Tamil province. Even this week President Mahinda Rajapaksa emphasised that police powers will not be devolved to the provinces under any circumstances. Rajapaksa’s Sinhalese nationalist allies are vehemently opposed to police powers being granted claiming that even the president himself would not be able to travel to the province in such an eventuality. Rajapaksa has a difficult task on the 13A as the Indian government has made it clear to him that it wants to see powers devolved to the provinces in Sri Lanka. The 13A amendment came about as a result of the Indo-Sri Lanka Accord signed in 1987 between then Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi and then Sri Lankan President J R Jayewardene which envisaged the devolution of powers to the provinces in the midst of the island’s bitter ethnic conflict. PTI