TELOnews.com

New Delhi is awaiting Colombo’s response to its request for opening a consulate in Jaffna.

A request to this effect was conveyed to the Sri Lankan Government shortly after the end of the so-called Eelam War IV, which concluded with the killing of LTTE leader Velupillai Prabhakaran in May last year.

India appears prepared and willing to render whatever assistance Sri Lanka needs and wants to rebuild the infrastructure and undertake development activities and projects in the Northern Province, currently in a shambles in the wake of the three-decade-long civil war.

In view of India’s likely involvement in various reconstruction and development projects in the civil war-ravaged Jaffna peninsula in the coming months, diplomatic sources here say Colombo may have no objection to New Delhi setting up a consulate in Jaffna.
Such a consulate may help the Indian government monitor the work being done by several of its agencies across the Northern Province, and also help promote greater people-to-people contacts across the Palk Straits.

At present, India has a high commission in Colombo and an assistant high commission in Kandy while Sri Lanka maintains a high commission in New Delhi, a deputy high commission in Chennai, a consulate general in Mumbai and an honorary consul in Kolkata.

Right now seven Indian teams are engaged in de-mining operations in the Northern Province.

India recently extended a US$425-million line of credit to Sri Lanka for three railway projects in the north to be executed by two public sector companies owned by the Indian Ministry of Railways: IRCON International Limited and RITES. While IRCON will lay tracks on the Omanthai-Palali and Madhu-Talaimannar sectors of the island’s Northern railway line, RITES will supply the rolling stock.

Five years ago, India was involved in repairing the extensively-damaged Palali/Jaffna civil-and-military airport, the second biggest in the island after Colombo.

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