NEW DELHI, March 20, 2013
Smita Gupta
The Hindu
DMK Parliamentary Party leader T.R. Baalu and party MP Tiruchi N. Siva after
submitting the letter of withdrawal of support to President Pranab Mukherjee at
Rashtrapati Bhavan on Tuesday night. Photo:Sandeep Saxena
Not anticipating that the DMK MPs would hand
over a formal letter of withdrawal from the government as early as Tuesday
night to President Pranab Mukherjee, the Congress managers had worked all
evening to draft a resolution on the plight of Sri Lankan Tamils, to be moved
in Parliament, in a bid to dissuade the southern party from quitting the
government.
Taken by surprise, senior Congress leaders
gathered shortly after at Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s residence to review
the situation: those present included Congress president Sonia Gandhi’s
political secretary Ahmed Patel, Parliamentary Minister Kamal Nath and Foreign
Minister Salman Khurshid.
But with the DMK’s T. R. Baalu, who led the
delegation to the President on Tuesday, saying that the party ministers will
put in their papers to the Prime Minister at 11 am on Wednesday, there did not
seem much hope of reconciliation.
The draft, sources said, did not use words such
as “genocide” while referring to human rights violations in Sri Lanka, or
indeed the sort of language that the DMK had wanted. It was closer to the
remarks that Congress President — and UPA chairperson — Sonia Gandhi had used
in her speech to the general body meeting of the Congress Parliamentary Party
on Tuesday morning.
At the meeting, she stressed that the plight of
Sri Lankan Tamils “is very close to our hearts” and that support for their
equal rights and equal protection has been “unwavering since the days of
Indiraji and Rajivji”. She then went on to demand an independent and credible
enquiry into the violation of human rights in Sri Lanka, even as she expressed
concern for the plight of Indian fishermen detained by the Sri Lankan Navy. But
clearly, this was not enough for the DMK.
