April 27, 2008	Sunday	Rabi-us-Sani 20, 1429

COLOMBO, April 26: The Marxist Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP), which split into two factions earlier this month, has warned that a victory by the government at next month’s Eastern Provincial Council election would pave way for India to implement its own strategy in Sri Lanka’s volatile east.

New Delhi’s plans to install a provincial administration friendly to India would be realised if a breakaway LTTE faction contesting the May 10 election on the UPFA ticket wins, JVP frontliner and Member of Parliament Anura Kumara Dissanayake told a recent media briefing.

Addressing journalists at a press conference, Dissanayake accused President Rajapakse of giving into Indian manipulation and explained that former Tamil Tiger rebel Pillayan who broke away from the LTTE in 2004 and supported government troops would be New Delhi’s choice as Chief Minister of the Eastern Provincial Council administration.

Dissanayake further alleged that the election was being held against the backdrop of increasing Indian focus on the eastern port city of Trincomalee. Dissanayake claimed that the military had denied permission for civilians to enter the area of Sampur in Trincomalee where India planned to establish a coal-fired power plant. Sampur was freed from rebel control after heavy fighting in 2006.

Debate on the present Indian role in Sri Lanka’s thirty-year old war with the LTTE has been increasingly featured in the local media in recent weeks after Priyanka, the daughter of Rajiv Gandhi confirmed she had met Nalini Murugan who was involved in Rajiv’s assassination by Sri Lanka’s Tamil Tiger rebels in May 1991.