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Sonia Gandhi will be there, but Jayalalithaa may keep away
Friday, 24 June 2005 - 2:15 AM SL Time
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NEW DELHI, June 23: Indian Prime Minister Dr Manmohan Singh will lay the foundation stone for the US$560-million Sethusamudram Shipping Canal Project (SSCP) in Madurai on July 2. Congress Party President and ruling United Progressive Alliance (UPA) Chairperson Sonia Gandhi will attend the function.
Other dignitaries who will attend the ceremony will include UPA partner DMK's Chief Muthuvel Karunanidhi, Finance Minister Palaniappan Chidambaram, and Shipping and Transport Minister TR Baalu, among others.
However, there is speculation in the media here that Tamil Nadu Chief Minister Ms Jayaram Jayalalithaa may keep away from the high-profile event because Union Minister Baalu is not `personally` extending an invitation to her. A lowly functionary of Baalu's ministry may deliver the invitation to the highly protocol-conscious chief minister's secretary.
Baalu belongs to the DMK party, a bitter rival of Ms Jayalalithaa's AIADMK party. Elections to Tamil Nadu state assembly are due any time before April 2006, most political parties in the southern Indian state are trying hard to impress the voters by claiming credit for making their 145-year-old dream a reality.
Ms Jayalalithaa says her mentor the late MG Ramachandran (MGR, the Kandy-born Tamil actor-turned-politician who founded the AIADMK and was Tamil Nadu chief minister) and she herself had been fighting for the Sethusamudram project for the past three decades. She says that, as a member of the Rajya Sabha 20 years ago, she had made many fiery speeches in Parliament's upper house asking for the project. So, the credit for it must go to her.
But the DMK claims credit for the project because its ministers in the federal cabinet, including Baalu, had worked hard to persuade Prime Minister Dr Singh to go for the project. Finance Minister Chidambaram, a Congress leader from the state, claims credit for the project because the Congress-led UPA is making the project a reality. And Vaiko, leader of UPA ally MDMK wants to hog credit by arguing that he is the one who used his personal influence with Dr Singh to sanction the expensive project!
Tight security arrangements are being made in Madurai for the Sethu project function. Special trains are being arranged to Madurai to enable people from other parts of Tamil Nadu to attend the ceremony.
The Sethusamudram canal opens up a channel for ships ferrying between India's eastern and western coasts to avoid going around Sri Lanka. India does not have a continuous navigable route within its own waters right now.
The project will link the Arabian Sea with the Bay of Bengal by dredging the ocean bed in the shallow waters to the north of Sri Lanka to create a navigable canal across the Gulf of Mannar, Palk Bay and Palk Straits. Its length will be 167km, and breadth 300metres. The canal's depth will be 14.5 metres deep to allow ships with draught of up to 65,000 DWT to cross. India hopes to complete the canal project in three and a half years.
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