Pressure mounts on Indian PM to boycott Sri Lanka CHOGM

[TamilNet, Monday, 04 November 2013, 19:38 GMT]
Tamil activists belonging to various groups sparked off protests in parts of Tamil Nadu and Puthuchcheari (Pudcherry) on Monday. At the same time, two senior Indian Central Government Ministers representing the ruling Congress Party from Tamil Nadu, Environment Minister Jayanthi Natarajan and Shipping Minister G.K. Vasan, have urged the Indian Prime Minister to boycott the Commonwealth summit in Colombo. Meanwhile, D. Raja, the national secretary and a Rajya Sabha member from the Communist Party of India (CPI), demanding a concrete reply from Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on Monday said that Central government cannot ignore the unanimous resolution passed by the Tamil Nadu state assembly demanding India to boycott Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (CHOGM) scheduled to be held in Colombo later this month.

Headlines Today reported that the Indian Ministry of External Affairs has aviced the Indian Prime Minister to attend CHOGM ‘in national interest’, claiming that a boycott would cause ‘increased Pakistan and Chinese influence’ on Sr Lanka.

“The MEA was also concerned of the implications of boycotting the meet wthat also includes other countries like UK, Australia and New Zealand,” the Headlines Today reported.

Earlier, on Saturday, Indian External Affairs Minister Salman Khurshid said Prime Minister Manmohan Singh would decide as to whether he would participate in CHOGM or not.

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