Dinesh Kamath's Editorial 'Jayalalithaa is right' that was published in Newsband

Jayalalithaa is right

Tamil Nadu Chief Minister Jayalalithaa’s protest against the participation of Sri Lankan players in the Indian Premier League is justified. What is wrong in her declaring that the State government will permit the matches to be held in Chennai only if the organizers provided an undertaking that no Sri Lankan players, umpires, officials or support staff would participate in these matches? The IPL governing council made the right decision to keep the Sri Lankan players out of the matches in Chennai. Atrocities by the Sri Lankan military against Tamilians have led to preventing cricket matches involving Sri Lankan players. The two issues are inter-related.

Not too long ago, when India’s relations with Pakistan were at an all-time low, the cricketing authorities worked behind the scenes and prevailed upon team owners not to bid for any Pakistani player. In the same way the Indian government should have prevented Sri Lankan cricketers from entering India and not just Chennai.

 In Sri Lanka, massacre is assisted by the Government. Things like talking about human rights on one hand and playing sports with the human rights violating nation, PM sharing a chair with the Lankan President watching cricket match finale in the homeland will all happen only in INDIA! The benevolent Indian democracy will try to appease its troubling neighbors by going to any extent, but trouble its normal citizens with hundreds of queries for a ration card or passport.

Why condemn the act of Tamil Nadu Chief Minister Jayalalithaa who has merely put some conditions for permitting Chennai IPL matches due to the vastly changed public opinion in Tamil Nadu, especially after the defeat of LTTE, corroborated by international independent observers documentations on war crimes of Sri Lankan military?

Delhi is geographically far off to Colombo than Chennai and hence the Central Government is not taking any concrete actions for doing justice to the ethnic Tamils. Therefore their brothers and sisters are forced to use every conceivable forum to highlight the plight of Lankan Tamils.

It's hard to keep politics away from any realm of activity, and sports is no exception. There is nothing wrong in banning Sri Lankan nationals’ involvement in sports - which epitomizes fairness, mutual respect and friendship - if that will convey our disappointment with the performance of the Sri Lankan state authorities on an issue more important than sports. This is not to spread hatred or seek to be even but merely to drive home the point that we aren't going to be mute spectator to the heinous acts. This is some way of imposing action, pushing the state to act for a speedy resolution of the issue or brace for isolation.