Former Finance Minister and senior Congress leader P Chidambaram on Monday slammed External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar over the latter's remarks on the ongoing Katchatheevu island row. Taking to X, Chidambaram said that people can "change colours" quickly in a dig at Jaishankar. "Tit for tat is old. Tweet for tweet is the new weapon," the Congress veteran wrote on the micro-blogging site.
The Katchatheevu island row started following Prime Minister Narendra Modi's comments on Sunday, in which he attacked the Congress over its decision to hand over the strategic island to Sri Lanka in the 1970s.
Chidambaram's remarks came hours after Jaishankar criticised the DMK and Congress on Monday, saying the two parties approached the island issue "as though they have no responsibility for it".
"Will foreign minister Mr Jaishankar please refer to the RTI reply dated 27-1-2015. I believe that Mr Jaishankar was the FM on 27-1-2015. The 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," the Congress leader tweeted.
Amping up his attack on Jaishankar, Chidambaram called the former a "suave liberal foreign service officer" who went on to become a "smart foreign secretary" to a "mouthpiece of the RSS-BJP". "Life and times of Mr Jaishankar will be recorded in the annals of acrobatic sports," Chidambaram tweeted.
In another tweet, the senior Congress leader acknowledged that Indian fishermen were detained in Sri Lanka in the last 50 years, but questioned whether the same did not happen when the BJP and Modi government were in power?
"It is true that Fishermen were detained in the last 50 years. Likewise, India has detained many SL fishermen. Were not Fishermen detained by Sri Lanka when Mr Vajpayee was PM? Were not fishermen detained by Sri Lanka when Mr Modi was in power since 2014?" Chidambaram asked.
Addressing a press briefing in Delhi earlier in the day, Jaishankar said that in the last 20 years, as many as 6,184 Indian fishermen have been detained by Sri Lanka and 1,175 Indian fishing vessels have been seized, detained or apprehended. "This is the background of the issue that we are discussing".
"In the last five years, the Katchatheevu issue and the fisherman's issue have been repeatedly raised by various parties in Parliament. It has come up in parliament questions, debates and in the consultative committee. The then Chief Minister of Tamil Nadu has written to me numerous times. And my record shows that to the current Chief Minister, I have replied 21 times on this issue. This is not an issue which has suddenly surfaced. This is a live issue," the External Affairs Minister added.
Jaishankar claimed that "we know who did this, what we don't know is who hid it. We believe that the public has the right to know how this situation came up".
PM Modi also doubled down on his attacks against the DMK with a fresh tweet on Monday wherein he said that new details on the Katchatheevu island issue "have unmasked DMK’s double standards totally".
