After the signing of the Indo-Lanka Accord in 1987, successive Sri Lankan heads of state visiting India consistently assured Indian prime ministers that the 13th Amendment would be fully implemented. These assurances were reiterated in joint statements issued by the two sides, reaffirming their commitment to the accord. However, during President Anura’s first visit to India, the joint statement he signed with the Indian prime minister conspicuously omitted any mention of the 13th Amendment. Media reports suggested that Anura had persuaded India that the Indo-Lanka Accord and the 13th Amendment were initiatives of the Congress government and, therefore, not binding on the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government. The accuracy of this claim, however, remains unclear.
In 1988, Ranasinghe Premadasa, an outspoken critic of the Indo-Lanka Accord, became President of Sri Lanka. Around the same time, Rajiv Gandhi’s Congress government, which had signed the accord, was defeated in India’s 1989 general election. During his presidential campaign, Premadasa had pledged to withdraw the Indian Peacekeeping Force (IPKF) from Sri Lanka’s north-east and to replace the Indo-Lanka Accord with a friendship treaty. However, these promises were not well received by the Rajiv Gandhi administration.
When Gandhi lost the 1989 election, Premadasa expressed relief and promptly dispatched Foreign Minister Ranjan Wijeratne to meet India’s new Prime Minister, V.P. Singh. Wijeratne, the first foreign diplomat to visit Singh, carried documents and photographs detailing alleged misdeeds by the IPKF in Sri Lanka’s northeast. Although Singh listened to Premadasa’s request and eventually withdrew the IPKF, he was reportedly displeased by the allegations against the Indian Army, which, despite being deployed under a Congress government, represented a national institution no Indian prime minister would want to criticize publicly. This strain hindered the Premadasa government’s ability to maintain strong ties with Singh’s administration.
While the Indo-Lanka Accord and the Provincial Councils system were not introduced by Prime Minister Narendra Modi or the BJP, the agreement represents a formal commitment by the Indian government. If the NPP government assumes that Modi’s BJP-led administration would disregard the accord, it would be a grave historical miscalculation.
