Meet Lanka prez to sort fishermen issue: Swamy tells Jaya

Bharatiya Janata Party leader Subramanian Swamy on Tuesday urged Tamil Nadu Chief Minister J Jayalalithaa to meet Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa in Colombo to work out a compromise to resolve the recurring issue of the arrest of Indian fishermen by the island nation's navy.

In a statement, Swamy also called upon Jayalalithaa to visit Jaffna in Sri Lanka, saying that the Tamil residents there were objecting to what they claimed was poaching by Indian fishermen in areas near Jaffna Peninsula. He further claimed that Indian fishermen were invariably crossing the international medial border line in the Gulf of Mannar.

Swamy's statement follows a letter from the Tamil Nadu Chief Minister to Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Tuesday seeking his personal intervention for securing the release of all Indian fishermen jailed by the island nation for allegedly fishing in its territorial waters.

“It is with a deep sense of anguish that I write to you again to report one more incident in which 11 fishermen from Tamil Nadu along with three boats have been apprehended by Sri Lankan Navy," she said in her letter to Modi.