By IANS,
New Delhi : The Supreme Court Monday refused to interfere with the military training imparted to Sri Lankan army and air force personnel in India.
Justice Aftab Alam and Justice Ranjana Prakash Desai dismissed a PIL filed by advocate N. Rajaraman, observing that the court cannot go into policy decisions of the government having foreign policy implications.
The court said the petition was misconceived.
The petitioner submitted that the government cannot train Sri Lankan military personnel and cited letters written by Tamil Nadu Chief Minister J. Jayalalithaa and other political leaders in the state.
Jayalalithaa has argued that India must not train Sri Lankan soldiers because of allegations that they committed atrocities on Tamils during the end stages of the ethnic conflict that destroyed the LTTE in 2009.
Sri Lankan military personnel attending a training course recently in Chennai were moved to Bangalore after Jayalalithaa protested against their presence in Tamil Nadu.
The petition contended that Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa had committed genocide on the Tamil people in his country and has been charged with committing war atrocities in violation of the international convention on human rights.
It held that the central government’s decision to train nine Sri Lankan Air Force personnel at the air force training college at Tambaram in the state was “very unfair and a cause of serious injury to the people of Tamil Nadu”.
The petition said that Tamil advocates in the apex court made a representation to the central government July 7 that Sri Lankan air force personnel should not be imparted training, but the government, instead of doing so, shifted their training from Chennai to Bangalore.
The petition has sought direction to the government to “consider and dispose” the July 7 representation on merit with a time frame.
The Indian government has said it will not stop training Sri Lankan military personnel.