Pointing out that S Jaishankar was then the foreign secretary, Congress leaders said that as external affairs minister Jaishankar has changed his position.
According to the purported RTI reply, to a query on who the real owner of Katchatheevu island was, an undersecretary of the external affairs ministry replied on January 27, 2015, “Katchatheevu island lies on the SL side of the India Sri Lanka IMBL (International Maritime Boundary Line) that was delineated by the 1974 agreement demarcating it in the Park Straits and a subsequent 1976 agreement demarcating it in the Gulf of Mannar and Bay of Bengal. This did not involve either acquiring ceding of territory belonging to India since the area in question had never been demarcated. Under the agreements, the island of Katchatheevu lies on the Sri Lankan side of the India-Sri Lanka International Maritime Boundary Line.”
Citing the 2015 RTI document, All India Congress Committee communication in-charge Jairam Ramesh said, “Is Dr S Jaishankar, now Minister of External Affairs, disowning the reply given by the Ministry of External Affairs on January 27th, 2015, when the same Dr Jaishankar was foreign secretary?… The easiest to hunt in a political expedition is a scapegoat. Who will it be?”
“Tweet for tweet is the new weapon,” senior Congress leader P Chidambaram said in a post on X. “The (RTI) reply justified the circumstances under which India acknowledged that a small island belonged to Sri Lanka. Why is the foreign minister and his ministry doing a somersault now? How quickly can people change colours.”
