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NPC to boycott President’s visit, CM wants India as guarantor
View(s):Northern Province Chief Minister C.V. Wigneswaran in a letter to President Mahinda Rajapaksa on Friday said he expected India to take up its role as the “guarantor of Tamil interests in the North East Province as it did when the Indo-Lanka Accord was signed in July 1987. “We expect the Government of India to actively participate and contribute to the negotiation process to enable the Tamil-speaking people in the north and east to live with dignity, peace and security,” the Chief Minister said.
Mr. Wigneswaran sent the letter to President Rajapaksa in response to a letter that was sent to him by the President’s Chief of Staff Gamini S. Senarath requesting the Chief Minister to be present at the special District Development Council meeting tomorrow at the Weerasingham Hall in Jaffna. The President will preside at the meeting.
“Having carefully discussed the proposed meeting with my Board of Ministers and Chairman of the Council, we have decided that it would be inappropriate for us to attend the (October) 13th meeting as well as other politically motived meetings in the NP, particularly when in reality the NPC and the Tamil speaking people are continuing to be marginalised,” the CM said in the letter released to the media on Friday.
In the letter, Mr. Wigneswaran accused the Government of acting arbitrarily in issues related to development work in the area and land distribution. The President is to distribute land to some 20,000 people in the Northern Province tomorrow. “As the Minister in charge of lands in the NP, I am unaware of the process undertaken by your officers to select the recipients, the legal basis on which you have decided to be so lavish with the lands in the NP, the criteria based on which allottees had been selected or whether persons who are not residents of the NP have also been selected,” Mr. Wigneswaran said.