The Indian Coast Guard has retracted its suggestion made in a counter affidavit filed before the Madras High Court Bench here that the Tamil Nadu government could declare an area of five nautical miles along the Indo-Sri Lanka International Maritime Boundary Line (IMBL) as a ‘no fishing zone’ in order to prevent cross border fishing.
The move has come after Chief Minister Jayalalithaa wrote to the Prime Minister Manmohan Singh last month terming the suggestion as “illogical, preposterous and absolutely outrageous.” She had urged the Prime Minister to instruct the authorities concerned to rectify the stand before the court at the earliest. Other political parties in the State too made similar demands.
Filing an additional counter affidavit in the court on Thursday, the Coast Guard’s Additional Director-General (Operations and Coastal Security) V.S.R. Murthy said that he wanted to remove paragraph number 13 of the counter affidavit submitted by him earlier in reply to a public interest litigation petition filed by a Madurai lawyer, B. Stalin, to provide security for the Indian fishermen.
The contentious paragraph read: “I humbly submit that post 26/11 Mumbai attacks, other coastal States such as Gujarat had instituted strict punitive measures against defaulters. The copy of Government of Gujarat notification issued on March 18, 2011 is placed at Annexure R-VI. It is most humbly submitted that similar strict orders will be required to be put in place for Indo-Sri Lanka IMBL to avoid illegal cross border fishing.”
However, the other contents of the counter affidavit, wherein the Coast Guard had claimed that the alleged attacks on Indian fishermen by the Sri Lankan Navy could have taken place only in the Sri Lankan waters, remained intact.
According to Mr. Murthy, no Sri Lankan vessel could intrude into the Indian waters as it would amount to contravention of legal treaties entered between the two nations in 1974 and 1976.
“The Indian Coast Guard has information from the Indian mission in Colombo about Indian fishing boats poaching inside Sri Lankan waters…The poaching by Indian fishers and usage of banned fishing gear have raised the issue of over-exploitation of fisheries resources in the Sri Lankan side of Palk Bay, besides challenging the sovereign right of the country over their waters.
No calls for assistance
“Even after deploying so many assets in the Palk Bay, the Indian fishermen never called for assistance through marine communication systems (VHF) whenever they came under attack, despite being a mandatory international practice to call for assistance through VHF. It is pertinent to state that most of the Indian trawlers carry VHF set,” his affidavit read.
- The Hindu