Chennai, May 25 – Tamil Nadu Chief Minister J Jayalalithaa is likely to skip Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s swearing-in ceremony.
Jayalalithaa may also not send any emissary, said sources.
The Tamil Nadu CM’s decision comes in the wake of the PM-designate’s invite to Sri Lankan president Mahinda Rajapaksa to attend his oath-taking ceremony.
Earlier, Jayalalithaa said it is “unfortunate” and tantamounts to “rubbing salt into the wounds of the already deeply injured Tamil psyche.”
The AIADMK supremo, a strident critic of the Rajapaksa administration, said Modi could have avoided the ‘ill-advised’ move of inviting the head of the island republic, especially with regard to the Centre-state relations.
Jayalalithaa, in a statement, said while the sentiments of Tamils living in India and elsewhere towards the Sri Lankan Tamils were known, a change of regime at the Centre “in no way alters the already existing strained relations between Tamil Nadu and Sri Lanka.”
She recalled the various resolutions passed in the state Assembly demanding an economic embargo on Sri Lanka among others over the alleged war crimes by the island nation’s Army under the Rajapaksa government against Tamils there during the final stages of “civil war”.
While the UPA Government “chose to ignore” the resolutions by not acting on them, there was a hope that the new regime would be sympathetic to the Sri Lankan Tamil cause, she added.
Modi had attended Jayalalithaa’s swearing-in as Chief Minister in 2011 and she had returned the favour in 2012 by being present when he took oath as CM in Gandhinagar.
-India Today
