New Delhi, India – Fifty years after India and Sri Lanka settled a long-simmering dispute over a tiny island, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi has accused a former authorities of the now-in-opposition Congress Party of gifting Indian territory to its southern neighbour.

The allegation by Modi and his ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) on the eve of nationwide elections has sparked a heated debate in India over a key diplomatic relationship.

At the centre of the controversy is Katchatheevu Island, for lengthy an emotive difficulty within the southern Indian state of Tamil Nadu, which votes on April 19 within the first part of India’s seven-stage elections.

What’s the controversy about?

Ahead of the Tamil Nadu vote, on March 31, Modi shared a information report on social media with the headline, “RTI reply shows how Indira Gandhi ceded island to Sri Lanka”. Modi asserted that Congress “callously” gave Katchatheevu Island to Sri Lanka.

The difficulty originated from a Right to info (RTI) request by Tamil Nadu BJP President Ok Annamalai, who prompt that within the Seventies, the Congress Party beneath the management of then-Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, in session with Tamil Nadu’s Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK), transferred possession of Katchatheevu Island to Sri Lanka. The DMK was ruling Tamil Nadu on the time and can also be in energy there now.

“Eye-opening and startling! New facts reveal how Congress callously gave away #Katchatheevu. This has angered every Indian and reaffirmed in people’s minds—we can’t ever trust Congress! (sic),” Modi posted on X, sharing the report. “Weakening India’s unity, integrity and interests has been Congress’ way of working for 75 years and counting,” he added.

Soon after, External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar reshared Modi’s tweet with the caption: “It is important that people know the full truth about our past. The facts brought out… should concern every citizen.” The overseas minister later echoed Modi’s allegations throughout two press conferences.

Modi has since repeated the allegations, together with in a marketing campaign speech in West Bengal on April 7 the place he alleged that for the Congress Party, each Katchatheevu and the territory of Kashmir, which is contested by India and Pakistan, don’t matter.

Many analysts consider the BJP’s choice to convey up Katchatheevu is aimed solely at serving to it in Tamil Nadu throughout the election. It is a state the place the BJP has solely a small presence and gained no seats within the 2019 vote. There are 39 nationwide constituencies in Tamil Nadu, with a mean of 1.51 million voters in every.

“The fact the issue has been raised in the midst of the elections clearly shows it has been done in the hope of gaining some support in Tamil Nadu where the BJP so far has failed to gain any foothold,” stated Sudheendra Kulkarni, a former BJP politician and present columnist, who served as a director of operations within the Prime Minister’s Office beneath the earlier BJP Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee, between 1999 and 2004.

Kulkarni stated the BJP transfer was “neither good politics nor good diplomacy and certainly not good neighbourhood policy”.

He questioned how Modi and Jaishankar may declare to have unearthed the “full truth” about Kathatheevu in 2024, after they had been in energy for the previous decade and had entry to all of the papers on the topic.

“All the facts that have come up have gone against the ruling party itself. Modi has been the prime minister for the last 10 years and for him to tweet that these are some new facts that have come up – how can the government be unaware of the facts when it has all resources at its disposal?” Kulkarni requested.

What and the place is Katchatheevu?

Katchatheevu is a small, barren island spanning 115 hectares (285 acres) inside Sri Lanka’s maritime boundary, situated 33km (20 miles) off the northeast coast of Rameswaram in Tamil Nadu. It lies southwest of Sri Lanka’s Delft Island.

Katchatheevu was ruled by the dominion of Ramanad Raja from 1795 to 1803 throughout British rule. The island can also be house to the 120-year-old St Anthony’s Church, which hosts an annual competition, drawing devotees from India and Sri Lanka.

Control of Katchatheevu has been a big level of rivalry between India and Sri Lanka, significantly concerning fishing rights within the surrounding waters. In a information convention final week, Indian Foreign Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar stated that Sri Lanka had detained greater than 6,000 Indian fishermen and 1,175 fishing vessels prior to now 20 years.

Pradip Chatterjee, the convener of India’s National Platform for Small Scale Fish Workers, informed Al Jazeera that what fishermen wanted was for India and Sri Lanka to keep away from adopting nationalist positions and as an alternative “amicably resolve this matter”.

Late final month, the Sri Lankan Navy confirmed in an announcement that that they had detained 23 Indian trawlers and 178 Indian fishermen in 2024 for allegedly fishing within the island nation’s waters. On April 4, 19 Indian fishermen had been launched by the Sri Lanka Navy and repatriated to India.

When did Katchatheevu develop into part of Sri Lanka?

The spat between India and Sri Lanka dates again no less than to 1921 and a survey that positioned it inside the maritime territory of what was then generally known as Ceylon, now Sri Lanka – a place that British India countered, citing the erstwhile rule of the Ramanad kingdom. The dispute continued after the independence of each international locations.

In 1974, India acknowledged Katchatheevu as a part of Sri Lanka’s territory in a maritime boundary settlement signed by Indian Prime Minister Gandhi and her counterpart Sirimavo Bandaranaike.

According to a duplicate of the settlement obtained by Al Jazeera, the pact allowed Indian fishermen and pilgrims to go to Katchatheevu without having a journey doc or a visa. However, the settlement didn’t specify the fishing rights of Indian fishermen within the waters round Katchatheevu.

Ashok Kantha, a former Indian ambassador to Sri Lanka, stated that the 1974 settlement led to additional agreements clarifying the maritime boundary with Sri Lanka. One such settlement in March 1976 recognised India’s sovereign rights over the Wadge Bank – a ten,300 sq km (4,000 sq mile) trawl fishery website – and its wealthy assets.

In comparability with Katchatheevu island, the Wadge Bank is taken into account one of many world’s richest fishing grounds, situated in a way more strategically essential a part of the ocean. The settlement additionally granted India the suitable to discover the Wadge Bank for petroleum and different mineral assets.

“The 1974 agreement placed Katchatheevu on the Sri Lankan side of the IMBL (international maritime boundary line) but it also paved the way for the understanding of 1976, which recognised India’s sovereign rights over the Wadge Bank and its rich resources,” Kantha stated.

However, the 1976 settlement restricted each the international locations’ fishermen from fishing within the different’s waters.

What do Tamil Nadu events say on Katchatheevu?

The two largest events in Tamil Nadu, the DMK and the All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (AIADMK), have lengthy advocated for the retrieval of the Katchatheevu Island from Sri Lanka.

In 1974, after India ceded Katchatheevu to Sri Lanka, M Karunanidhi, the then chief minister of Tamil Nadu, wrote to Gandhi on how the land was traditionally part of the Ramnad kingdom’s territory.

However, the BJP in the present day blames the DMK authorities for being complicit with Congress in handing over the Island to Sri Lanka.

In 1991, the Tamil Nadu meeting adopted a decision demanding the retrieval of Katchatheevu Island. In 2008, Tamil Nadu Chief Minister J Jayalalithaa from the AIADMK approached the Supreme Court to nullify the agreements of 1974 and 1976.

But amid the present controversy, each the AIADMK and DMK have criticised the BJP for elevating the Katchatheevu difficulty forward of the final elections.

What have Modi and the BJP beforehand stated?

In the wake of the controversy, Shiv Sena (UBT) MP Priyanka Chaturvedi alleged inconsistencies within the Modi authorities’s place on Katchatheevu, citing a 2015 RTI reply from the Ministry of External Affairs. Jaishankar, now overseas minister, was then the highest profession diplomat within the overseas workplace.

“This [1974 agreement] didn’t involve either acquiring or ceding of territory belonging to India since the area in question had never been demarcated,” Jaishankar’s ministry had stated in 2015. “Under the agreements, the island of Katchatheevu lies on the Sri Lankan side of the India-Sri Lanka International Maritime Boundary Line.”

In 2014, after Modi got here to energy, Attorney General Mukul Rohatgi informed the Supreme Court that Katchatheevu was given to Sri Lanka based mostly on a bilateral settlement in 1974 and “to retrieve it now, we have to go to war”.

What are the implications for India’s relations with Sri Lanka?

Harsh V Pant, the vp for research and overseas coverage on the Observer Research Foundation, stated that whereas the controversy wouldn’t hurt the India-Sri Lanka relationship, revisiting settled points like Katchatheevu wouldn’t be within the pursuits of both facet.

“Tamil Nadu is an important state now being contested by the BJP. So, it is very natural for the BJP to try to find space in a state where it has no presence, using all available issues that come its way and this issue is one of them,” Pant stated.

“The BJP leadership seems to be highlighting the opposition’s past mishandling of the issue but I don’t think there is intent to change the way the dispute was settled decades ago. Therefore, I think this is unlikely to continue beyond the elections,” Pant added.

Other governments, he stated, “understand the compulsion of electoral democracy and [that] many things are said during elections that are forgotten later. That’s why I think we have seen the Sri Lankan government not really intervening in the matter”.

On April 4, Sri Lankan Foreign Minister Ali Sabry informed a neighborhood tv channel that Colombo didn’t see any “necessity to have further discussions on” what he described as a settled matter.

Former Indian diplomat Kalarickal Pranchu Fabian stated that so long as India doesn’t attempt to renegotiate the Katchatheevu cope with Sri Lanka, the home politics surrounding the island wouldn’t have an effect on bilateral ties.