Chennai, Mar 06: Marumalarchi DMK, a constituent of the Vajpayee government, today asked the Centre to reject Sri Lanka's proposal to build bridge across the Palk Straits, connecting Thalaimannar in Jaffna and Rameswaran in Tamil Nadu, calling it a ''treacherous'' ploy to scuttle the long pending Sethusamudram project. In a detailed letter to Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee, who had given an open assurance to execute the Sethu project during the MDMK conference here in 1998, Vaiko said the revised proposal to have a narrow canal instead of the Sethu project would do only harm the aspirations of the people of Tamil Nadu. ''Large ships cannot sail in the narrow canal,'' he pointed out. Writing from his prison cell at Vellore, where he is being incarcerated under Pota, Vaiko urged Vajpayee to ignore Lanka's objections about the Sethusamudram project (voiced by Lankan president Chandrika Kumaratunge when she met him in Delhi). The project would eliminate the need to circumnavigate Sri Lanka for reaching southern Indian ports and thereby attract international shipping to India diverting the same from Colombo, Vaiko noted. The Government of India had given these concessions to Sri Lanka after the Chinese aggression in 1962 to the detriment of the people of Tamil Nadu, he lamented. Calling for speedy implementation of the Sethu project, he said it had been a persistent demand of the people of Tamil Nadu for over a century.
Regretting that budgetary provision had not been made for the Sethu project, Vaiko appealed to Vvajpayee to execute the project which was still pending Neeri clearance.
Vaiko who has been championing the cause of the Sethu project, had extracted the first open assurance about its execution from the Prime Minister himself. Bureau Report