Congress gets bombed in no fire zone

Hardnews Bureau

The Congress is extremely troubled by the happenings in Sri Lanka and its impact on the party's fortunes in the Parliament elections. So hassled are the Congress candidates by the sudden aggravation of the crisis where hundreds of thousands of Lankans are locked up in an increasingly unsafe No Fire Zone (NFZ) that they want the government - or what is left of it - to intervene and force a ceasefire on the beleaguered Tamil Tigers and the Sri Lankan government. Home Minister P Chidambaram, who is fighting a difficult election from his traditional seat, Sivaganga, was very keen to head the Indian delegation to Colombo to convince the Sri Lankan President, Mahinda Rajapaksa, to call off the military operation. But Foreign Minister Pranab Mukherjee, Hardnews was informed, stalled his efforts. Later, National Security Advisor, MK Narayanan, and Foreign Secretary Shiv Shankar Menon met the Lankan president.

The Congress government has been dithering over how it should countenance the Tamil Tiger issue, as LTTE is proscribed in India and their supremo, V Prabhakaran, has been held guilty by the courts for assassinating former Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi. In the past, wily Prabhakaran has used international pressure to slip out of the cordon. When the Indian Peace Keeping Force (IPKF) was on the threshold of snuffing out the Tamil militancy and nabbing the Tiger chief, he quickly allied with the then Sri Lankan President Premadasa and forced the Indians to leave the tear-shaped island country.

However, this time around, the threat to Tamil Tigers is very serious and they face complete annihilation if India and the world community do not come to their rescue soon. Indian elections and the sway of pro-Eelam parties in Tamil Nadu have presented an opportunity for the LTTE to force the Indian government to pressurise Colombo for a ceasefire. What compounds the problem is that Congress ally, DMK, has never concealed its love for Tamil Tigers. Its leader, Tamil Nadu Chief Minister M Karunanidhi, has perfunctorily asked the central government in the past to stop the Sri Lankan government from exacerbating this humanitarian crisis. Seemingly, the Lankan government has taken longer to finish the challenge from Tamil Tigers thereby causing the violent face-off to influence the elections in the southern state. Karunanidhi and his party has suddenly realised that the happenings in the northern Tamil preponderant part of the neighbouring country have become a poll issue and hence cannot be ignored. Worse, his opponent, Jayalalitha, did a volte face and declared that Tamils in Sri Lanka can only get peace and security if there is a separate homeland - Tamil Eelam. Karunanidhi's fast and trenchant response to the intense fighting is a reaction to this.

Congress, which has an alliance with DMK, is hoping that it would benefit from the aggressive posturing by their partner. At the moment, it hangs by a thin thread. Nearly all political observers, after the climaxing of Tamil crisis in Sri Lanka, are not giving the Congress-DMK alliance more than 10 seats. And, if there is no quick reversal in this trend, the chances of the Congress-led UPA to retain Delhi would get worse. There is no way that the UPA can replace the loss of Tamil Nadu and an indifferent performance in neighbouring Andhra Pradesh from gains in any part of the country.