"Any displaced community, living as refugees in another country, would prefer to be rehabilitated in their own land, amongst their own kith and kin."  There cannot be two opinions on this statement of the AIADMK leader Jayalalithaa.  She was reacting to Karunanidhi's plea to the Centre for granting permanent citizenship to Lankan Tamil refugees settled in the state.

By making such a short sighted proposition, Karunanidhi has helped the AIADMK, DMDK and BJP to unite on this crucial issue.

 "By making a unilateral demand for permanent resident status, Karunanidhi has trivialised the protracted struggle of the Tamil people dating back to the 1950s, when concepts of Sinhala only and Standardisation, were introduced by the Sri Lankan government. Karunanidhi is part of the centre which had "snuffed out" the Tamils' fight for self-determination,” she said.

Her two queries on whether the refugees would be able to derive any major benefits by getting status of permanent residents and whether they would be able to enjoy reservation are truly relevant.

Jayalalithaa has also visualized that refugees from Bangladesh, Myanmar and Tibet would raise similar claims for citizenship rights once a precedent is set with the Tamil refugees from Sri Lanka.

Karunanidhi's demand is also opposed by the DMDK headed by actor Vijayakanth and BJP. DMDK presidium chairman P Ramachandran has said the idea of granting citizenship was a convenient ploy to help the Lankan government to push the Tamils out of their homeland. BJP's state unit on Sunday demanded that Centre and state government take steps to ensure that Tamil refugees living in the State led an "honourable" life in their respective places in Sri Lanka rather than offering them Indian citizenship.

One doesn’t understand the compulsions under which Karunanidhi came out with this highly impractical and unrealistic proposition, which in the long run would do more harm than good to the Sri Lankan Tamil refugees.